Vucic asks Hipper: Do you mean the Dialogue in which you signed off on the establishment of the CSM?

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said today that the European Commission had reacted promptly to his statement about a possible diversion of the Ibar River in order to protect its "Albanian lackeys," while failing to react to the non-establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities or to what he described as the daily arrests and harassment of Serbs in Kosovo.

While visiting the Sportex sports equipment company in Arilje, Vucic was asked to comment on a statement by the European Commission spokesperson that remarks about diverting the river "do not support the objective of normalizing relations" between Kosovo and Serbia and that this could be achieved only through dialogue. He responded by asking whether she meant the Dialogue to which the EU had put its signature but which, he said, was not being respected.

"Do you mean the Dialogue in which you even signed off on the establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities? Is that the Dialogue you mean? Or do you mean the absence of dialogue and your response to the daily arrests of Serbs, the daily harassment of Serbs, the daily persecution of Serbs, and the demolition of Serbian houses? Is that what you mean? And then you suddenly remembered to ask whether someone is going to divert watercourses or not," Vucic said.

He said that any possible diversion was still a long way off and that a working group would first have to be established and experts brought in.

"We already have certain experts, and we actually have needs in this area, so we will see what we will do and how. But they reacted promptly to this, to protect their 'Albanian lackeys' and tell them once again: keep committing crimes," Vucic stressed.

He said that Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces Milan Mojsilovic had also spoken with KFOR Commander Ozkan Ulutas regarding the issue.

"Mojsilovic spoke with the people from KFOR, with the commander, Ulutas, the Turk, who said: 'No problem, the Kosovo Police will work together with us...' Really, no problem? Fine, now we see why you did everything you did in 1999. We understand everything, and there is no great mystery to it. Fine. From that perspective, at least we know who we are dealing with. Just stop pretending that you are here for some kind of dialogue or anything else, because you are not interested in dialogue," Vucic said.

He said that if they had genuinely supported dialogue, the Albanians would have fulfilled their obligations under the Brussels Agreement, adding that they had only one obligation—the CSM.

"And they have not fulfilled it, nor do they have any intention of doing so. They openly say that they have no intention of doing so. And you give them everything else simply because you want to drive Serbia out of Kosovo and expel it from there. And then you expect us to apologize to you and tell you how wonderful you are, while we are the 'bad guys' who do not know what we are doing," the president said.

He stressed that "we live in such a hypocritical world" where people question why someone else has said they will not respect the territorial integrity of another country, while they themselves refuse to respect the United Nations Charter and Serbia's territorial integrity.

"They will not even respect their own agreements and arrangements that they reached and signed. And then they lecture me on top of that. Go lecture someone else. Forget about me. That is my message to them," Vucic said.

Asked whether he had spoken with General Mojsilovic, Vucic said that he had and reiterated that Mojsilovic had spoken with KFOR representatives.

"That was probably the worst conversation General Mojsilovic and the KFOR Commander have had so far," Vucic stressed.

European Commission spokesperson Anita Hipper said earlier today that statements about a possible diversion of the Ibar River did not support the objective of normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia and that this could be achieved "only through dialogue."