The Kosovo government has urged the European Union (EU) to do more to condemn Serbian Minister Snezhana Paunovic’s statement about “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, saying the bloc’s initial response was “limited and delayed.” Paunovic – Serbia’s Minister for Public Administration and Local Self-Government – told Serbian television station Kurir last weekend that, if she had been in the shoes of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1998, she “would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo.” The statement sparked widespread backlash, and Kosovo has now filed charges against her and permanently banned her from entering the country.
On Saturday, the Kosovo Government announced that First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Glauk Konjufca, sent a letter to the EU High Representative, Kaja Kallas, to request a stronger reaction from the European club that both Kosovo and Serbia aim to join. In this letter, dated July 16, the Kosovo Government asks the EU “to clearly and publicly condemn Minister Paunović’s statements, to make it clear to the Serbian authorities that such rhetoric is unacceptable and contrary to European values, and to address this issue seriously within the framework of the political dialogue and Serbia’s EU accession process.”
Paunović’s statement has already been condemned by the EU, and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos repeated the condemnation on Thursday, saying she was surprised that she continued to remain a minister in the Serbian government. “I will not repeat what she said either. It was truly shocking to hear such a statement. I cannot imagine that a minister, after such a public statement, could continue to exercise her duties,” Kos said on Thursday. Meanwhile, in Serbia, the country’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, said that Paunović’s statement “does not reflect my will, nor that of the Serbian government,” adding that “the policy of the Serbian state is dialogue, never ethnic cleansing.”
Paunović – deputy leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia, Milošević’s former party – did not retract her words, but said on July 16 that they were “taken out of context” and apologized to Vučić and the Serbian government for the reactions they caused. On the other hand, the only Albanian MP in the Serbian Parliament, Shaip Kamberi, announced on Thursday that 53 opposition MPs had submitted a request to Serbian Prime Minister Đuro Macu for Paunović’s dismissal.
They asked Prime Minister Macu to, "without any delay," propose her dismissal to the Serbian Parliament.
It is not clear whether Macut will make such a proposal to the 250-seat Serbian parliament. Observers from Kosovo and Serbia told Radio Free Europe that Paunovic's statement is part of a political pattern of Serbia towards Kosovo, demanding that the international community not be satisfied with just reactions, but take concrete actions against Serbia.
Her statements touch on old wounds in Kosovo, as hundreds of thousands of Albanian civilians were expelled from Kosovo during the 1998-1999 war. That war claimed the lives of over 13.000 civilians, mostly Albanians, while thousands more remained missing.
More than 1.500 people, mostly Albanians, remain missing. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague has named the then leaders of the FRY as key participants in a “joint criminal enterprise” aimed at forcibly expelling hundreds of thousands of Albanian civilians from Kosovo in 1999. According to the verdicts, the aim was to “alter the ethnic balance in order to maintain Serbian control over Kosovo.” The main defendant, Slobodan Milosevic, died in custody before the trial was completed, while former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic was found not guilty./REL
