Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that the statement by the Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government of Serbia, Snezhana Paunović, does not reflect either his will or that of the Serbian Government, emphasizing that the state's policy is dialogue and never ethnic cleansing.
"It was a thoughtless and irresponsible statement. One should not go public with such statements and this is not my policy, nor the policy of the Government of Serbia. It is our duty to say this clearly," Vučić told reporters in Kiev, where he is attending the Southeast Europe-Ukraine Summit.
Paunovic, in an interview with Serbian television Kurir, said, among other things, that if he had been in the place of Slobodan Milosevic – the former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, indicted for war crimes by the Hague Tribunal – he would have “ethnically cleansed Kosovo” in 1998.
Speaking about life in Kosovo and her departure from Peja during the war, she said that she "would not have liquidated the Albanians in the way they are trying to ethnically cleanse Kosovo, but in such a way that anyone who felt less of a citizen of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would leave and go to their mother country."
This statement sparked numerous reactions and Kosovo, on July 14, declared him persona non grata, permanently banning him from entering or transiting through the country's territory.
The acting government of Kosovo previously told Radio Free Europe that "the problem is that the Serbian state has never distanced itself from Milosevic's policies."
"It is good that everyone - in addition to condemning this language - also keeps it in mind when talking to Serbia about integration, reforms and funds, and understand that these are not just declarations, but aspirations that the official state of Serbia has not given up on," said the Kosovo executive.
The then state leaders and security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were convicted by the Hague Tribunal for the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Albanian civilians from Kosovo in the period March-June 1999.
During the war in Kosovo in 1998-1999, more than 13,000 civilians were killed, while thousands more disappeared. More than 1,500 people, most of them Albanians, are still missing./ REL
