Drecun: Pristina's goal is to erase any trace of Kosovo-Metohija as Serbian territory

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian parliamentary committee on defence and interior affairs Milovan Drecun said on Monday Pristina's goal was to erase all traces of Kosovo-Metohija being Serbian territory.

Commenting on Sunday's arrest of 36 Serbs at the Gazimestan memorial complex near Pristina, Kosovo-Metohija, Drecun said Albin Kurti and all others who were terrorising the Serbs would prefer them to come to Gazimestan with Ottoman Turkish flags.

The group was detained following a St Vitus's Day memorial service for the fallen Serbian heroes of the Battle of Kosovo against Ottoman Turkish invaders.

Gazimestan is the site of the battle, which took place on St Vitus's Day in 1389.

"The Serbs can only go there with Serbian flags, and that is how they want to go there. Pristina's goal is a clear intent to erase any trace and any awareness of Kosovo-Metohija being Serbian territory. Before the holidays, the Quint states issued a formal warning that the Serbs' right to use of national symbols must not be obstructed. As they were issuing such futile warnings, Kurti went into action and got more than 30 people, including an underage boy, arrested," Drecun said in an appearance on K1 TV.

He also said Pristina's court summonses to people suspected of committing alleged war crimes were a particular form of pressure on the Serbs.

"By sending those summonses, Pristina is trying to circumvent the officially agreed model of providing legal assistance. That mechanism has been agreed in Brussels and, under it, all requests for questioning of witnesses or those accused must be delivered to our prosecutor's office through UNMIK, and vice versa. Instead, they (Pristina) are completely ignoring that process by sending those summonses by post. The procedure is as follows: Pristina sends the parcels to Vienna, and Vienna then forwards them here," Drecun said.

"Pristina does not care at all if a summons has really been delivered or not. Their intent is to use that as court evidence of attempted delivery to obtain a legal foundation for trying our people in absentia. Slightly over 20 such summonses have arrived so far," he explained.

The biggest problem is that Pristina has secret indictments and no one knows who is on them, Drecun noted.