President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, in an interview to Belgrade-based daily Blic spoke, inter alia, about the issue of Kosovo.
Q: The issue of Kosovo and its solution are in the focus again. How do you look at what is happening now?
Dodik: “Vucic managed to restore Kosovo as a topic, because it was lost, outdated, pushed aside, people were uninterested. Now we have come to a position that perhaps we can do something. A fortunate set of circumstances is the shift in the political processes in the EU and America. The elites that have marked the past have disappeared and if anything is true, then it’s true that in the United States there is no Clinton’s team.
We need to primarily, give an answer to ourselves to the question of whether, hypothetically, Serbia can bear the return of Kosovo and entrance of the guaranteed quotas for the Albanian community into the political system. Very few are thinking about it. In order for you to identify yourself before the international community, you would have to give the Albanians 30 percent of seats in parliament, you would have to give them the position of the Prime Minister or Speaker of the Assembly or President of the state. You would have to also introduce their language, at least in the Assembly. If someone thinks we can do it, let’s then push for it. I do not think that there is such readiness”.
Q: Here we come to the theory that the Americans, indirectly, helped this snatching of Kosovo. On the other hand, what you are talking about is interpreted as an alibi for the surrender of Kosovo?
Dodik: “The betrayal, surrender, over board patriotism are old Serbian themes and illnesses. Here one needs to sit down rationally and see what it is about”.
Q: Do we know what is this about and what do we want?
Dodik: “I can speak for myself, risking being misunderstood, because people here are very polarized on this issue. I think that four municipalities from the north of Kosovo should be reintegrated into the territorial composition of Serbia, to ensure the highest international standard of protection of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija and to protect the church property and to seek some sort of extraterritoriality. Sometimes the history corrects some of its mistakes, but it all depends on people.
When I told the foreigners in Brussels they could have shown their good will so that at least the four northern municipalities would have remained in Serbia, this is what they told me: “But no one is asking us for that”. Therefore, no one has ever asked for it. The problem of our policy is that we always expect, and we do not ask. It does not work like that.”
Q: You said that if it comes to Kosovo getting a seat in the UN, you will ask the same for Republika Srpska.
“I do not hide at all that my political goal is for Republika Srpska to become independent, an independent state, and I believe that our people have the right to do so. Of course, I’m not an adventurer, and in that regard, I exclude any type of violence. On the other hand, the same ones who prohibit this for us in the RS, are allowing the same for Albanians in Kosovo,” Dodik told Blic daily.
