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Tough struggle for protection of religious heritage in Kosovo ahead of Serbia

Belgrade, 4 October 2015

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic said today that Serbia expects to hear from the European Union (EU) what the European response to the refugee crisis is, in a situation where part of the EU member states allow refugees to enter their territories, and part of them are closing borders and raising fences.

Author: Tanjug

Dacic said at a regular press conference in Belgrade that Serbia is squeezed between these two parts of the EU.

He stressed that the upcoming ministerial conference in Luxembourg on 8 October, which in addition to foreign and interior ministers of EU member states will also gather ministers of other countries that are affected by the crisis, including Serbia, will be dedicated to finding solutions to the crisis, which is currently the main topic in Europe and the world.

The Minister said that not everyone is equally interested in resolving the crisis and warned that Serbia needs financial help, but that the issue of the European strategy is even more important because as he said, the crisis is causing tectonic disturbances in the functioning of the EU.

Dacic said that the admission of Kosovo-Metohija to UNESCO would be a self-destructive decision of this organisation, adding that it would be as absurd as if someone suggested that the ISIS become a member of UNESCO.

At the session of the Executive Council of UNESCO out of 58 members, 32 recognised Kosovo and 26 did not, which means that a tough fight for the protection of our interests is ahead of us. Everyone in the world with whom we talked about our cultural and religious heritage in Kosovo-Metohija agree with our arguments, but there is a great difference between verbal approval and a formal decision, bearing in mind that these countries did recognise Kosovo's independence, Dacic explained.

He added that a session of the Executive Council on placing this issue on the agenda is scheduled to begin on 12 October. The decision could be on the agenda of the General Assembly on 21 October and in order to be adopted, it requires a two-thirds majority.

Our position is that this topic should not be talked about until it is discussed in Brussels, as we agreed at the outset that this should be one of the topics of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. Therefore, we believe that it is detrimental for future course of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue to decide on this issue on the basis of unilateral moves of Pristina and on the basis of majority vote in UNESCO, Dacic stated.

He presented the data that since KFOR has arrived in Kosovo-Metohija, more than 200 churches, monasteries and other religious and cultural facilities have been destroyed, that they were pulled down with dynamite and burnt and that 8,000 tombstones were destroyed.

Speaking about the rationalisation of the number of employees in the public sector, Dacic said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today has fewer employees than when he was appointed minister.

We have 60 employees less than a year and a half ago and the tendency is to reduce their number, Dacic said and added that a half of the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are in diplomatic and consular representative offices of Serbia abroad.