Brnabic: Kurti wants no Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia ready to protect them

BELGRADE - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic said on Tuesday placing Serbian military and police forces on full alert meant Serbia was ready to react in case someone attacked Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, and added that Pristina's PM Albin Kurti was demonstrating that an expulsion of Serbs from the province was the only thing he wanted.

Kurti's unbelievable and shameless provocations and unilateral moves have come full circle in 2022, Brnabic said in a statement to reporters.

"He has violated all agreements and, by saying full circle, I am referring to the fact that he began by abolishing the Serbs' right to vote in January and that he has now banned Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering Kosovo-Metohija," Brnabic said.

She said the situation in Kosovo-Metohija was becoming increasingly serious and that tensions were growing.

"Kurti has started to threaten with human casualties and forcible removal of barricades and I hope international partners will be reasonable enough not to permit such things," Brnabic said.

The Serbs only want fundamental human rights, rather than arrests without evidence, harassment or kidnapping, and they want lawyers to be allowed access to arrestees, whose families should not be without any contact with them for 14 or 15 days, she said.

They want implementation of international agreements, they want no secret arrest lists and they want Pristina's police and its special troops withdrawn from the north of Kosovo-Metohija pursuant to the Brussels Agreement, Brnabic also said.

"Those are not only not big demands, but minimal ones, and it seems to me they should not even be discussed in the 21st century," she said.