Assembly Committee on Rights and Interests of Communities and Return meeting was held last Friday in Pristina, TV Most reported.

President of the Committee and Vice-President of Serbian List Igor Simic in an interview for Radio Mitrovica on Saturday said there were some reactions during the meeting related to the questions he made, noting that first and foremost according to the State Department report during the last year, more than 100 attacks on Serbs, their properties, and the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church were committed, and therefore, in that context he asked Minister of Interior Ekrem Mustafa what is the police doing to solve these crimes, punish the perpetrators and prevent such things from happening in the future?

Simic further noted the answer he received was in fact a clumsy attempt to avoid responding, with the story that “they have some strategy” to try to reduce the number of crimes.

“Moreover, I heard something that is at least very stupid,” Simic said, “that the Serbs are reporting they are attacked in order to obtain some material benefits”.

Simic said he was dissatisfied with the attitude of the minister and police representatives and thus he has left the meeting with all colleagues from the Serbian List because, as he said, he had no intention of discussing anything other than the security of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, which was drastically endangered in the last few months.

KFOR did not provide reasonable explanation about tour of soldiers from Albania in Mitrovica North

Speaking about the tour of Albanian uniformed soldiers in Mitrovica North Simic said that he does not know the reason for such a walk and creation of such an environment in which the citizens were really upset.

“For the first time after 20 years and following a series of different statements by politicians from both Tirana and Pristina about unification of Kosovo and Albania, such a visit takes place. Citizens were upset for a reason”.

“KFOR did not provide a reasonable explanation as to why such a visit occurred at this time and what it was that prompted in the first place to organize such a visit to the north of Kosovo and Metohija,” Simic added.

“The fact remains that what we saw yesterday on the streets of Mitrovica, absolutely should not have happened, nor it had any purpose, unless someone wanted to raise the tensions, and evidently they succeeded in doing so after yesterday’ events (…)”.

He emphasized that representatives of Serbian List would continue to hold regular meetings and consultations with all relevant factors on the ground and pointed out that in the past period they had a good cooperation with the new KFOR Commander Lorenzo D’Addario, which is why they were really surprised by the yesterday’s visit.

“At that time, at meetings with COM KFOR and his associates, we repeatedly insisted on having them inform us regularly about their various activities on the ground, in order to convey it to the citizens and thus prevent some sort of reaction to what KFOR is doing on the ground”. Simic pointed out the need for constant daily exchange of information, which was agreed in the past.