Belgrade will not give up on Community of Serb Municipalities - gov't

BELGRADE - The escalation of the crisis in Kosovo-Metohija and the systemic discrimination and violence against Serbs there are the sole responsibility of Pristina, the Serbian government says in its Report on the Talks Process with Institutions of the Interim Self-Government Authorities in Pristina from September 1, 2022 to January 15, 2023.

The report, which has been tabled to the Serbian parliament, notes that Belgrade will not give up on its demand for an urgent establishment of a Community of Serb Municipalities and that the Serbian government will remain focused on immediate protection of the safety of Serbs in the province as well as on protection of Serbian national interests.

The parliament will debate the report at a special session scheduled to begin on Thursday.

The session will also be attended by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

The report says the crisis in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue has developed and deepened since 2018, escalating extremely in the reporting period.

"The sole responsibility for such developments undeniably rests upon the current interim self-government authorities in Pristina, which, since Albin Kurti's rise to power, have continuously been stepping up a systemic discrimination of Serbs while doggedly rejecting and violating all agreements reached in the dialogue to date," the report says.

Pristina's actions on the ground were drastically intensified in the period through brutal violence and threats to use violence against Kosovo-Metohija Serbs, it also says.

Since September 2022, Pristina has been making determined attempts to avoid implementation of its commitments from the agreements reached in the dialogue to date and to impose unilateral solutions on the ground to make life for Serbs in the province as difficult as possible, the report says.

It says the 68 ethnically motivated attacks on Kosovo-Metohija Serbs in the past four and a half months - accounting for 25 pct of such attacks in the period since Kurti's advent as Pristina's PM - are a testimony to the level of danger for Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija.

"This is also confirmed by the most recent ethnically motivated attacks on Serbs, which, increasingly frequently, involve ROSU as well as so-called Kosovo Security Force troops, directly or indirectly," the report says, noting that the armed ethnic Albanian formations fully confirmed their anti-Serb character on January 6, 2023.

On Orthodox Christmas Eve, Azem Kurtaj, a serviceman of the so-called Kosovo Security Force, attempted to kill 11-year-old Stefan Stojanovic and 21-year-old Milos Stojanovic in Gotovusa near Strpce, the report recalls.

"Instead of clearly condemning an evident crime, Pristina officials described it as an 'attack on young persons', even though it is clear the young men were fired at because they are Serbs."

Nearly all international officials in the province used a similar logic in their "condemnation" of the incident, which is difficult to understand, but it is even more difficult to understand that the Gotovusa attack took place almost simultaneously with the presentation of the KFOR commander's response to Serbia's request for a return of a number of Serbian forces to Kosovo-Metohija, the report says.

It notes that the Serbian government made the request at the height of a crisis that followed the unlawful arrests of Serbs Miljan Adzic and Dejan Pantic and Pristina's threats to peaceful Serb protesters at barricades.

The report also says ROSU units have made 19 raids into the north of Kosovo-Metohija to date and that their terror culminated in the serious wounding of Miljan Delevic.

Pristina's judiciary is also using the same anti-Serb pattern, as in the case of Dejan Pantic, whose whereabouts and health condition were unknown for days, while Nikola Nedeljkovic was sentenced to eight months in prison without any grounds whatsoever, the report says.

Such non-civilisational actions by Pristina have caused several serious crises on the ground since September 2022 and defined the nature of dialogue, which was used solely as a mechanism for deescalating those crises, it says.

The report also says an agreement on vehicle licence plates was a last-minute deal reached to avert a serious escalation on the ground sparked by Pristina.