Published September 29,2023
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Serbia‘s president stated Friday that the U.S.‘ secretary of state advised him of potential measures which may be taken in opposition to Belgrade as tensions rise following lethal clashes in Kosovo between ethnic Serbs and police.
“I told (Antony Blinken) — you are a big country, a big power. It’s yours to do what you think you have to. I’m absolutely against that and I think it’s very bad, but there are things we have to stick to, and that is first and foremost the truth,” Aleksandar Vucic stated after a telephone dialog with Blinken.
Vucic stated that they had agreed on the necessity for de-escalation of tensions and a higher position for the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (KFOR).
“I had a long and easy conversation with Secretary of State Blinken. There are several things that we agreed and there are several other things on which we didn’t agreed. I informed him with details about the facts about the recent events in Kosovo,” Vucic advised media retailers.
One of the issues on which they disagreed was the character of the clashes in Kosovo and particularly points associated to Kosovo’s sovereignty.
“I don’t want to hide anything and I’m not interested in what anyone in the world thinks about it, because we have evidence that at least one, and possibly two persons were literally liquidated in cold blood and that they were not liquidated in battle but wounded, they were alive, they surrendered, and then they were liquidated in cold blood from a short distance,” stated Vucic.
On Sunday, a conflict broke out within the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo close to the Serbian border when a gaggle of armed Serbs blocked a bridge with two vehicles. A shootout erupted after the group opened fireplace on police, leaving one police officer lifeless and one other injured.
The space has been the scene of unrest since April, when native ethnic Serbs boycotted elections in northern Kosovo, adopted by protests in opposition to the election of ethnic Albanian mayors.
Albanians are by far the most important ethnic group in Kosovo, adopted by Serbs, with about half residing within the nation’s north.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and gained recognition from many nations, together with Türkiye. But Belgrade has by no means acknowledged Kosovo and claims that its territory remains to be a part of Serbia.
Source: www.anews.com.tr