Granting Pristina associate membership in NATO PA a dangerous precedent - MPs

SOFIA - The Serbian parliamentary delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly said the organisation's decision on Monday to grant associate membership status to the so-called Kosovo assembly was a dangerous precedent that would further worsen the living conditions for Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija.

In a statement, the delegation said it had not been consulted in the decision-making process and that the results of a vote showed that there had been no consensus on the matter within the NATO PA.

In addition to representatives from countries that do not recognise the so-called Kosovo - Spain, Romania, Slovakia and Greece - the decision was not supported by representatives of recognisers France and Italy while the Hungarian delegation voted against, it said.

The statement notes that representatives of the Serbian delegation had not been allowed to request to speak neither before the vote nor after the decision to grant associate membership status to Pristina had been confirmed.

The Serbian delegation also said Kosovo-Metohija Serbs were already living in "ghetto-like" conditions that were fully unacceptable in Europe today.

It said the decision rewarded Pristina's PM Albin Kurti for all the unilateral moves taken in the past several years.

The decision rewards "well-planned, continuous, systematic and broadly-distributed ethnically motivated attacks on civilian Serb population, due to which 15 per cent of the Serb population has left the territory of Kosovo-Metohija over the past year, and due to which 212,000 Serb and other non-Albanian internally displaced persons have never returned," the statement said.

The decision further encourages Pristina not to implement reached agreements, including the establishment of a Community of Serb Municipalities, a commitment undertaken more than 11 years ago, the delegation said.

"The decision violates UNSCR 1244 and all agreements reached in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue to date," the statement concluded.