Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has warned Kosovo against using Albania for filing a genocide lawsuit against his country.
It comes following news that the Kosovo government is preparing to file the lawsuit with the UN International Court of Justice next year.
Vucic’s statement on Wednesday implies that Kosovo cannot file the lawsuit with the ICJ on its own as it is not a member of the United Nations.
“You threatening with genocide lawsuit? In order for this to happen, you should only do it through Albania, and this means unification with Albania. I ask Albanians from Kosovo to not do that,” Vucic said, according to a report by the Belgrade-based media B92.
Kosovo got independent from Serbia in 2008, after a brutal war that left thousands of Albanian civilians killed and more than half of the population displaced by Serbian troops.
Vučić points out that Serbia can easily reach an agreement with all countries in the region, but that foreign actors constantly want to limit and restrain Serbia.
In a comment on the appearance of various “non-paper” documents that envisage border changes in the Balkans, he was personally “against border changes”, but that politicians from abroad who said they were against open border changes were “openly lying”. They say that they are against, precisely “for changes in the borders of Serbia”.
Vučić said that there was “hypocrisy” of the international community when it comes to the attitude towards Serbia, stating that “we had the most irresponsible people who did not know that we must not enter into a conflict with NATO, but the question is how many choices they had.” /argumentum.al