The speech Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic held over the weekend in Kosovo triggered fierce reactions among politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who assessed it as “shameful” and “scandalous.”
During his two-day visit to Kosovo, Aleksandar Vucic addressed the Serb community inhabiting the Serb-dominated northern part of the divided town of Mitrovica.
Among other things, he said the former Yugoslavia President, Slobodan Milosevic, who was tried by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, was “a great Serbian leader.”
“Aleksandar Vucic showed once again with his scandalous speech in Kosovska Mitrovica that he is still devoted to the Greater Serbia idea, in whose implementation he participated as a part of Milosevic’s regime,” said Bosniak politician, Sefik Dzaferovic, a candidate for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state Presidency.
“The whole civilised world recognised Milosevic as the embodiment of the greatest evil that came upon these territories. It is shameful that the President of Serbia regrets over the ‘failure’ of Milosevic’s criminal policy,” Dzaferovic said pointing out that Vucic should completely give up on Milosevic’s policy and stop regretting if he truly wants European Serbia and stability in the Balkans.
The Civic Alliance also slammed Vucic for his words, warning that both “Vucic and Serbia are without any doubt a part of every, including Russia’s, plan for triggering the instability in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region.”
The party said Vucic’s statement is yet another confirmation that every discussion on border changes in former Yugoslavia, between Serbia and Kosovo, is actually a discussion on border changes and divisions within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Fahrudin Radoncic, the leader of the Alliance for Better Future (SBB BiH), accused Vucic of “falsifying the history” by his glorifying of Milosevic.
“Besides, Milosevic and his regime are responsible for the Srebrenica genocide and many other war crimes, among which is nearly four-year-long, bloody siege of Sarajevo,” Radoncic said, demanding from the official Belgrade to control the emotions and not to raise tensions “the way Vucic does it.”
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ended without a verdict as the Serbian leader died in his prison cell in The Hague in March 2006.
After the death, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded within the Bosnian genocide case that there was no evidence linking Milosevic to the atrocities that the court ruled was a genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. However, it did find that Milosevic and others in Serbia did nothing to prevent the genocide from happening and for not cooperating with the ICTY in punishing the perpetrators.
