BELGRADE, June 4 (Hina) - A decrease in the percentage of ethnic Serbs in the entire population of Croatia is the consequence of the war and the victory of (Slobodan) Milosevic's ideology, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic
said on Tuesday.
BELGRADE, June 4 (Hina) - A decrease in the percentage of ethnic
Serbs in the entire population of Croatia is the consequence of the
war and the victory of (Slobodan) Milosevic's ideology, Yugoslav
Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said on Tuesday. #L#
"(Former Yugoslav president) Milosevic might have technically lost
all the wars, but his ideology has won, and that is horrendous. He
waged the wars guided by the motto 'we cannot live with them',"
Svilanovic said in an interview to the independent Belgrade news
agency Beta.
"The result of the war in Croatia is a drop in the percentage of
Serbs from 12 to four percent, i.e. an ethnically cleansed Croatia.
The result of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a country divided
into three parts, the result of the war in Kosovo - an ethnically
cleansed Kosovo. Thanks to the complete absence of repatriation,
less and less Serbs live with other nations outside Serbia," the
minister said.
Asked about relations with Croatia, the Yugoslav minister said he
was satisfied with what had been done over the past year and a half.
He added that he expected the two parties' agreement on the
introduction of tourist visas would be implemented, but he did not
expect mass journeys from one country to the other to start
immediately.
Asked about the insistence on Belgrade to apologise to the citizens
of former Yugoslav republics for the war, Svilanovic said that
"Serbian politicians should do it", but added that it would be more
difficult for the incumbent authorities to apologise due to "the
very short time span".
In the course of time, it will become obvious that some explanations
as to what happened in the past ten years are necessary, but it is
also necessary to give explanations for some other tragedies, the
minister said.
Belgrade cannot be excluded from efforts to solve the problem of
Kosovo, Svilanovic said, expressing pessimism about a mass-scale
return of Kosovo Serbs, which he said was a long and gradual
process, whose outcome was open to speculation at the moment.
The minister said his county might be admitted into the Partnership
for Peace programme by June 2003.
He said Belgrade had fulfilled conditions for admission to the
Council of Europe and repeated that he would step down if Yugoslavia
failed to join this body by the end of 2002.
(hina) sb ms