Dacic urges int'l community to find political solution to situation in Israel

BELGRADE - Serbian First Deputy PM and FM Ivica Dacic on Tuesday urged the international community to find a political solution to the situation in Israel.

"On the very first day, Serbia condemned the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, and it sympathises with the people of Israel," Dacic told reporters before a Serbia-Israel conference on defence and security, and urged a political solution that would avert further casualties.

He said the Hamas attacks were impermissible and deserved utter condemnation despite differences in the positions of Israel and Palestine.

"We call on the entire international community that a political solution be found to these problems because that could be the only long-term solution. Unfortunately, this is not a new situation, this has been going on for several decades now," Dacic said, adding that Serbs, too, had been targeted by terrorism in Kosovo-Metohija.

Commenting on the impact of global crises on the situation in the north of Kosovo-Metohija, Dacic said many in the international community had refused to believe Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who had been warning for months that Pristina PM Albin Kurti's leadership was the main problem in Kosovo-Metohija.

"His leadership is refusing to implement peace plans and the establishment of a Community of Serb Municipalities, which has resulted in him having a Serb police commander dismissed and in a lack of Serb representation in the police, as well as in raids - ethnic Albanian police have raided the north of Kosovo-Metohija 62 times, which is contrary to the agreement with NATO," Dacic said.

He said Serbia's role at this time was to be consistent in advocating agreements and talks as well as to call for an end to violence against Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, and added that the role of the international community was to finally exert pressure to ensure the establishment of the Community, which he noted was crucial for the position of Kosovo-Metohija Serbs.

He said Kurti was doing everything to complicate the situation in the north of Kosovo-Metohija in order to expel the Serbs or make them leave their ancestral homes on their own.

"After all these months, I think it is clear to everyone what the main problem is, but whether the international community will have sufficient strength and desire to point to the problem and put Kurti under pressure we will see in the period to come because he is their project, and the so-called Kosovo's independence has been their project throughout all these years and decades, so they will do everything to be lenient about everything he is doing," Dacic said.