Pristina officials are trying to strengthen their position in diplomatic struggle for admission in UNESCO, so they initiated the bidding on the number of mosques that Serbian Security Forces allegedly ruined in Kosovo.

In regards to the application of Kosovo for UNESCO membership, Serbian officials stated that “those who destroyed 150 orthodox churches and monasteries from 1999 don’t have a moral right to apply for UNESCO membership.” Reacting to that statement, Pristina officials replied that Serbian Police and Army in 1998 and 1999 destroyed from 200 to 300 Islamic places of worship. Different Kosovo sources were not clear if it was 200, or all 300 Islamic religious places.

Recalling The Hague verdict in case against general Vlastimir Djordjevic and last year’s verdict for ‘Kosovo six’ (Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic, Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic and Sreten Lukic), Kosovo Deputy FM Petrit Selimi said that in those cases was accepted the expertise of Andras Riedlmayer. Riedlmayer is co-author of the research “Destroying of the Kosovo cultural heritage 1998-1999,” where he states that in mentioned period was ruined, approximately 225 out of 607 Kosovo mosques.

Milovan Drecun, the Chief of the Serbian Parliament’s Committee for Kosovo said that mentioned mosques were destroyed in war operations, since they served as a “strong base of UCK”. The number of those cases is approx. dozens. “Some mosques served for the attack on Serbian security services. Only in those cases soldiers would reply on the attack.”

“If there was intention to destroy mosques, the all of them would be destroyed. There were incidents, but I don’t know how many. However, those were individual actions and the claims that such incidents were supported by the Serbian State are senseless,” said Dusan Prorokovic, Director of the Centre for the strategic initiatives.