Serbian opposition leader in U.S.: Most Serbs will never accept independent Kosovo

Serbian opposition leader in U.S.: Most Serbs will never accept independent Kosovo

The president of the People's Party and one of the leaders of the Alliance for Serbia, Vuk Jeremic, stated in Washington on Feb. 28 that the majority of Serbs would never accept Kosovo and Metohija as an independent state.

"I was told at the Department of State that we had to understand that Kosovo was an independent state and accept the reality that would not change. I am afraid that is not possible for anyone who has regard for our cultural and national identity," Jeremic said during a lecture at Georgetown University, as conveyed by the People's Party.

Jeremic also met with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer at the Department of State.

"It is absolutely impossible for us to give up on Kosovo and Metohija. Nobody in the history of Serbia has done that," Jeremic said.

He advocated the urgent securing of normal living conditions "... so that Serbs and Albanians can start living without tension."

"It is currently very hard because the authorities in Belgrade and Pristina are composed of people who have been deeply involved in the hostilities of the 1990s. Hashim Thaci was a war commander and, I deeply believe, a war criminal, while Aleksandar Vucic was Milosevic's minister of information. I doubt that the two of them are able to reach an agreement on the normalization of life, all together with their colleague Ramush Haradinaj," Jeremic stated.

He stressed that he opposed the rearrangement of borders according to the ethnic principle because that would be a dangerous precedent for the region, with potentially catastrophic consequences.