Starovic: Adoption of the recommendation for Pristina's full membership in the Council of Europe is an expression of injustice and arrogance

The decision of the Political Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to adopt a recommendation for Pristina's full membership is an expression of injustice and a high degree of arrogance, State Secretary in the Ministry of Defense of Serbia, Nemanja Starovic, stated, as reported by RTS.

Starovic emphasized that the report of the rapporteur for Kosovo in the CoE, Dora Bakoyannis, was full of contradictory and unjust elements and that it could be discussed why she had set only three conditions from the beginning of her work on that report, of which only one had been fulfilled.

He added that this decision represented an expression of injustice and a high degree of arrogance.

"The recommendation for Pristina's accession to the membership of this largest and oldest pan-European organization certainly violates both the letter and the spirit of the founding documents of the Council of Europe, as well as the fundamental principles on which the Council of Europe is based," Starovic said.

Starovic noted that only one condition had been fulfilled – the return of land to the Visoki Decani Monastery, while nothing had been done for the remaining two conditions, the issue of expropriation of Serbian land in northern Kosovo and the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities.

"Despite all this, the report recommends that Pristina become a member of the Council of Europe, and to be clear, since we can hear different interpretations, it recommends some kind of supervised membership. No, such a category of membership in the Council of Europe does not exist," Starovic said.

He pointed out that there was a full membership and that all members were subject to constant monitoring.

Starovic mentioned that members of the Political Committee had completely ignored everything that had been happening in Kosovo in the last two years since Pristina applied for membership in the Council of Europe.

"They ignore the fact that basic human, political, and economic rights are denied to Serbs, starting from the ban on Serbs voting in Serbian elections, imposing illegitimate mayors and councilors in municipal assemblies, to something that too closely resembles a military occupation of northern Kosovo and Metohija, through the use and constant deployment of these special militarized mono-ethnic Albanian forces of the Kosovo police," Starovic emphasized.

He also reminded of the ban on the import of goods produced in central Serbia, as well as the ban on dinar transactions, which has been in effect since February 1.