To UNESCO, Visoki Decani and Gracanica are in Serbia - ambassador

BELGRADE - Serbian Ambassador to UNESCO Tamara Rastovac Siamasvili said on Monday Serbia's re-election to the UNESCO Executive Board was a clear signal of its international position and the diplomatic room available to it to halt initiatives contrary to its national and state interests, such as Pristina's UNESCO membership bid.

"Our re-election is a huge success, especially because we are the only country in the eastern European group to have achieved re-election. We received absolutely the highest number of votes, and there were more candidates than there were places to be filled," Rastovac Siamasvili told the Vecernje novosti daily.

"The fact the necessity of Serbia staying on the board was recognised shows the level of appreciation for our engagement and the level of our reputation at UNESCO," she said.

Membership in the board is extremely important because of the issue of the so-called Kosovo, she said.

Any request by Pristina would have to be cleared by the board, which puts us in a very good position, Rastovac Siamasvili explained.

"On the other hand, any request (by Pristina) runs against the predominant sentiment at UNESCO - a strong opposition to politicisation. In brief, Pristina has no support whatsoever for a potential membership request," she said.

She added that a UNESCO General Conference was underway and that there had been no indication Pristina would apply for membership again because it realised the move would end in failure.

"They applied in 2015 and lost the vote, and they did not submit a formal application at the next session in 2017 because they were discouraged and they made no further attempts after that," Rastovac Siamasvili said.

She said the four Serbian holy sites inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list - the Patriarachate of Pec, the Church of Our Lady of Ljevis and the Visoki Decani and Gracanica monasteries - remained in the list after receiving enormous support at a World Heritage Committee meeting in Saudi Arabia in September, and added that this showed they were still in danger.

"Whether they belong to Serbia was not an issue at any point," Rastovac Siamasvili noted.