Petkovic: We protected the interests of the state of Serbia when it comes to the Declaration on the Missing Persons

The director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, said in Brussels that the text of the Declaration on Missing Persons, which had previously been agreed upon at the technical meeting, had been adopted.

"Before the adoption of the text of the declaration, a written statement signed by President Aleksandar Vucic was attached, where important things were clarified with the term mentioned in the Declaration on Missing Persons. This statement confirms that we have protected the interests of the state of Serbia when it comes to this issue. For more than two years, the state of Serbia insists on the adoption of this Declaration. All the time, Pristina is obstructing and does not want us to agree on this issue because it insists on the term defined in item two of the International Convention on Enforced Disappearance, and Pristina deliberately insisted on this term in order to if that term were to be found in the text itself, it could refer to it and demand the responsibility of Belgrade, that is, the state of Serbia when it comes to enforced disappearance," Petkovic said.

Petkovic said that the Serbian delegation had not agreed to that appointment.

"We agreed on what the Serbian side insisted on and what entered the text of the Declaration is the term "forcibly disappeared". the circumstances under which a person disappeared," Petkovic said and added that 1,621 persons were missing, of which 568 were of Serbian nationality, adding that it was an important humanitarian and civilizational issue to finally establish "the full and real truth about missing persons".

He added that Belgrade had complied with all Pristina's requests and that 23 locations in central Serbia had been excavated, but that Pristina was not complying with Belgrade's requests when it came to another nine locations where there were reasonable suspicions that Serbs were buried there.

"That is why it is important that we have a declaration even where Pristina has blocked, to start the process and that the families of those who disappeared first of all get the bodies of the disappeared and that the full truth is known. Once again, in order to avoid misinterpretations, this is not a document that was adopted, that mentions the term that includes the responsibility of Belgrade and Serbia, we rejected it and, consulting with the greatest legal experts from international law, came up with a term that is acceptable to us, which describes the conditions under which a certain person disappeared," Petkovic said.

When asked what the statement of the High EU Representative, Borrell meant that operational steps would be worked out at the next meeting between Petkovic and Bislimi, the Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija explained that this implied that all actors who had participated so far, when it came to the search for the missing persons, would continue their job.

"Let me remind you that Pristina blocked that process for more than two years; now we need the International Committee of the Red Cross, which leads the whole process together with Belgrade, Pristina, EULEX, and other factors, to get involved again, to activate all the committees, working groups that work to find the missing persons. Let's finally see and wait for the excavations of nine more locations to begin in Pristina, in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. The only location that Pristina has excavated is the Bunker location near Djakovica, where the bodies of the Sutakovic family, father, mother, and three children, and two Petkovic family members were found, and there are many such locations," Petkovic said.

He added that Serbia had sent requests for nine locations and that those requests had not been acted upon for more than two years.

"Pristina has now taken an obligation, but we will see if they will fulfill it," Petkovic said.

He added that in the further course of the dialogue, the discussion on the draft Statute of the CSM presented by the Management Team, as well as on other important issues, continued.