Serbian, Kosovo FMs Address U.N. Security Council Session Debating Work of UNMIK

United Nations Security Council (Photo:UN/Loey Felipe)

At the U.N. Security Council session in New York in the evening on April 20, Kosovo Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla-Schwarz accused Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic of manipulating facts and creating a picture that the Serbs in Kosovo were endangered.

During a debate on Secretary General Antonio Guterrres’ biannual briefing on the work of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the Kosovo minister said that Selakovic “is trying to do something very similar to” what then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic had been doing in the ‘80s.

“The Serbian foreign minister is today trying not only to manipulate facts, but also to do something very similar to what Milosevic was doing in the ‘80s. That is how a war broke out in the Balkans. It started by creating a perception that the Serb minority (in Kosovo) was endangered, that Serbia’s intervention was required, accompanied by propaganda and fake news,” Gervalla-Schwartz said.

In his address to the U.N. Security Council, Selakovic underlined that the rights of the Serbs in Kosovo were threatened, saying, among other things, that they were worried and were awaiting every day with anxiety as they could not be sure that their fundamental human rights would not be violated.

Gervalla-Schwartz said “it is sad that Serbia cannot distance itself from Milosevic’s crimes,” not only in Kosovo, but also in Slovenia Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She added that incumbent president Aleksandar Vucic was “a part of the Milosevic system,” that he “propagated genocide as something

heroic” and that he “has never apologized.”

Selakovic said that the goal of the Pristina regime was not an independent Kosovo, but creation of “a great Albania.” Selakovic noted that Gervalla-Schwartz had spoken about Serbia’s crimes in the ‘90s “rather than about real problems, violations of human rights and ignoring the crimes committed by the Kosovo Albanians.”