Macut: Kosovo-Metohija to be one of biggest challenges for new government

BELGRADE - Serbian PM-Designate Djuro Macut said in the parliament on Tuesday defence of Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity in Kosovo-Metohija would be one of the biggest challenges for the new government and that it was important to reach a political and social agreement on a united defence of Kosovo-Metohija.

"We will not give up on special measures introduced to enable all our citizens in the southern province to receive salaries and pensions regularly and exercise their rights, especially the right to education, social benefits and health care," Macut noted, presenting his government's programme.

"Keeping our southern province a part of Serbia is our constitutional obligation, as well as our oath that no government will ever and must ever deviate from. The sponsors of the false state of 'Kosovo' are using amply the wounds inflicted on our country in the past several months to lend a new impetus to the promotion of unilateral agendas of the provisional self-government authorities in Prisitna," Macut said.

"The government will continue to invest maximum efforts, both through its Office for Kosovo-Metohija and at the level of each individual ministry and every public clerk in them, to ensure that our people in the southern province can survive and stay in their ancestral homes, protected from persecution and able to live a normal and dignified life," Macut said.

He said a Srpska lista victory in the elections for the assembly of the Pristina provisional institutions was a feat achieved in impossible conditions and a foundation for rebuilding the political strength of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija.

"This success demonstrates the Serbs' readiness for unwavering political struggle, and the government will help them in that struggle so that they can achieve everything that is guaranteed by international law, especially the Brussels Agreement, whose full implementation we will constantly be advocating everywhere, fighting for the survival and the rights of our people in the province. We will also not neglect the international arena - above all, the UN, or international organisations such as the Council of Europe, Interpol and others," Macut said.

He said ongoing global political changes gave reason for hope that the attitude towards the Kosovo-Metohija issue, Serbs in the province and Serbia's interests would change for the better, at least slightly.

"We believe that the consistency, principledness and constructiveness demonstrated and proven for years by our country, its negotiating team and its president will begin to be valued in a way that will help to improve the living conditions of the Serbs and other Serbian citizens, to rein in Pristina's unilateral actions and to normalise the situation in local self-government units with a Serb majority," Macut noted.