NATO Poses a Threat to Serbia, Asserts Vucic

Belgrade, April 21 – Western representatives called on Serbia to join NATO and scare away Russia, but NATO has become a threat to Serbia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on the TV channel “Brva”.

Serbia adheres to military neutrality by a parliamentary resolution passed in 2007, while it was a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme.

“They are asking us to join NATO because Russia would endanger everyone… We cannot join NATO because NATO has created a threat to us,” Vucic said.

The Serbian head of state also noted that April 23 marks the 24th anniversary of the NATO air strike on the Serbian Radio and Television building, which killed 16 of its employees.

On the anniversary of the start of the 1999 bombings on March 24, Vucic asked the NATO leadership a question: “Who gave the Alliance the right to kill Serb citizens?” NATO bombings killed more than 2,500 people, including 87 children, and caused losses worth $100 billion. Doctors record the consequences of using depleted uranium, which leads to increased rates of cancer.

In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the army and police in Serbia led to the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (which at that time consisted of Serbia and Montenegro) by NATO forces. The military operation was carried out without the approval of the UN Security Council and based on the assertion of Western countries that the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia carried out ethnic cleansing in the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe there. Airstrikes by NATO lasted from March 24 to June 10, 1999.