Vucic: I Have Asked Rutte for NATO Not to Allow Opening of Ibar Bridge

Aleksandar Vucic (BETAPHOTO/PREDSEDNISTVO REPUBLIKE SRBIJE/Dimitrije Goll)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stated on Aug. 20 that he had sent a letter to NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte with a request for the western military alliance not to allow the opening of the bridge across the Ibar River in Kosovska Mitrovica and for KFOR to “stop Pristina’s terror against the Serbs.”

“I have just sent a letter to NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte and requested that KFOR, in accordance with Resolution 1244 of the U.N. Security Council, stops the terror against the Serbs, their persecution, arrests, demolition of houses, as well as the opening of the Ibar bridge, and that the international community takes steps to make Pristina implement the key provisions of the Brussels Agreement of 2013,” Vucic stated in a video post on Instagram.

He stated that he had “asked and requested from Rutte that NATO does not allow the opening of the Ibar bridge, which signals the creation of major preconditions for a final settle-up” with the Serb population in northern Kosovo. Vucic said that the chief of General Staff of the Army of Serbia, Milan Mojsilovic, recently had a “very bad conversation” with KFOR Commander Ozkan Ulutas regarding the opening of the Ibar bridge, and that he had asked Rutte to stop supporting that decision of the Pristina authorities.

“We have asked them not to do it because the opening of the Ibar bridge is a subject of the Brussels dialogue. None of this would have happened had the European Union, had the West respected what they signed in April 2013. This is happening because they have not respected that, because the Community of Serb Municipalities has not been formed,” Vucic stated. He went on to say that Serbia would “continue to fight politically in all possible ways, not excluding the option of convening an extraordinary session of the U.N. Security Council, because (Kosovo Premier) Albin Kurti’s terror against the Serb population must stop.”