Vucic: Serbs have met difficult obligations but Serb municipalities not on horizon

NEW YORK - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in the UN Security Council on Monday the Serbs had met all the difficult obligations from the Brussels Agreement with Pristina but that, after 11 years, the establishment of a Community of Serb Municipalities was "not even on the horizon."

"On April 19, it was exactly 11 years since the most important agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on the path of normalisation of relations was adopted in Brussels. One of the signatories was also the EU," Vucic said during a debate on the UN secretary general's report on UNMIK, the UN mission in Kosovo-Metohija.

"Eleven years later, even though the Serbs met all the difficult obligations from the mentioned agreement, the community of Serb-majority municipalities and its formation are not even on the horizon.

For all the Serbs living in Kosovo-Metohija, for entire Serbia, these 11 years have been eleven years of undelivered promises, daily excuses and untruth.

Eleven years of accidental or intentional inability of the EU as the guarantor of the respective agreements to move things from square one," Vucic noted.

All that has resulted in continued violence and physical harassment of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, he said.

He also said Pristina's ban on the Serbian dinar was a culmination of a "protracted, comprehensive and ethnically motivated campaign" against Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, and noted that the Pristina regime was creating unbearable living conditions for the Serbs and systematically harassing Serb civilians.

"Instead of being sanctioned, (Pristina PM Albin) Kurti's regime keeps being rewarded," he said.

He said the "only tangible outcome" of the five rounds of Belgrade-Pristina dialogue held in Brussels since a February 8 urgent UN SC session on Kosovo-Metohija was an "exposure of Pristina's true motives."

He explained that, unlike Kurti, Pristina's chief negotiator Besnik Bislimi had confirmed that the "unilateral and escalatory decisions to effectively abolish the dinar in Kosovo-Metohija had profoundly affected the people."

"Bislimi's sincerity acknowledged the actual intention to eradicate all Serbian presence in Kosovo-Metohija," Vucic said.

"Therefore he, like Kurti, remained committed to Greater Albania hegemonic aspirations, which preclude any negotiations with Serbia and coexistence with Serbs," Vucic said.

He noted that 16 new ethnically motivated attacks against Serbs had taken place in Kosovo-Metohija since the urgent UNSC session.

Vucic called on UNMIK head Caroline Ziadeh to use her powers to oversee the interim institutions in Pristina and take urgent action in collaboration with Kfor to guarantee security and human rights to all the population of Kosovo-Metohija.

He also said potential Council of Europe membership for the so-called Kosovo would be a reward to Kurti's regime for persecuting Serbs and creating an apartheid system in the heart of Europe.