Vucic in letter to Rutte: NATO must stop terror against Serbs and opening of the bridge over the Ibar

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic sent a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in which he called for KFOR, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1244, to stop the terror against Serbs, their persecution, arrests, and house demolitions, as well as the opening of the bridge over the Ibar, and for the international community to take steps to ensure that Pristina implements key provisions of the 2013 Brussels Agreement.

In a video posted on Facebook, Vucic pointed out that uninterrupted persecution and terror against the Serbian people in Kosovo have been going on for the past five years, all the while with the international community remaining silent or taking a favorable attitude toward it.

“The European Union is silent, NATO is silent, everyone else is silent,” Vucic noted.

He said the persecution consists of the fact that more than 800 ethnically motivated attacks against the Serbian population have been recorded over the past five years, “including as many as 257 Serbs who were arrested, innocent and without justification, and as a rule severely beaten, mistreated, and terrorized by so-called police officers of so-called Kosovo.”

“I have just sent a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, with whom I recently had an important conversation on the sidelines of the Summit in Paris, and I asked and urged NATO not to allow the opening of the bridge over the Ibar, which would create significant conditions for a final confrontation with the Serbian population in the north of the province,” Vucic said.

He also repeated that Serbian Armed Forces Chief of the General Staff General Milan Mojsilovic had a very difficult and bad conversation with KFOR Commander Ozkan Ulutas.

“We asked them not to do this because it has always been a subject of dialogue. The opening of the bridge over the Ibar was a subject of dialogue, and no agreement was ever reached. None of this would have happened if the EU and the West had respected what they signed in April 2013. Because they did not respect it, because the Community of Serb Municipalities was not established, because the rights of Serbs are not being respected, all these things are happening today,” Vucic concluded.

That is why, he said, he sent the letter to Rutte and asked NATO to withdraw its support for such a decision by the Pristina authorities.

“I believe that his judgment will be that regional peace and stability are of great importance. And we will continue to fight politically in every possible way, without excluding the possibility of convening a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the position of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, because the terror of Albin Kurti and Pristina against the Serbian population must stop,” Vucic said.

The Serbian president had previously announced that he would write to Rutte regarding the announced reduction of KFOR's presence at the bridge over the Ibar and its opening to traffic.