As Serbia is to face disciplinary measures from FIFA for making political statements against Kosovo in a dressing room at the World Cup, the country’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic called the football body hypocrites and doubled down on the statement.
Serbia played Brazil last week, and shortly after the match, a photo from the dressing room showing Kosovo as part of Serbia and “no surrender” scrawled across it. Kosovo’s Minister of Culture Hajrulla Ceku shared the image on Twitter, stating it displays “displaying hateful, xenophobic and genocidal messages towards Kosova while exploiting the FIFA World Cup platform.”
“The FIFA Disciplinary Committee has opened proceedings against the Football Association of Serbia due to a flag displayed in their dressing room on the occasion of the Brazil v Serbia,” FIFA said in a statement on Saturday.
The Kosovo Football Federation (FKK) said it “strongly condemns Serbia’s aggressive actions” against Kosovo.
But on Sunday, Dacic said there was nothing wrong with the flag and compared the situation to that of Ukraine and Russia.
“Serbia is an internationally recognised country, a member of the United Nations, with Kosovo part of Serbia, what is not in accordance with international law and what is offensive. This indicates that there are no principles but double standards. They never punished Ukraine when it said that ‘Donbass is ours’ and ‘Crimea is ours, what is the difference”, Dacic wrote.
Meanwhile, despite a tenuous agreement brokered by the EU and US to diffuse tension over license plates in the north of Kosovo, Serbian Defence Minister Milosh Vucevic said the situation is still tense.
“Serbs are worried because it is not known what the next step will be for Kurti, a man who has shown that he makes not very rational decisions and that he is not a man of agreements”, said the minister.
Kurti said the agreement was reached under advice from the US that the situation could “severely and irreversibly deteriorate.”
Kosovo was in the midst of rolling out changes to the law that would eventually require all citizens to display car license plates issued by Pristina. Serbia disagreed with this as up to 10,000 Serbs in the north continue to use Yugoslavia-era plates as they do not recognise Kosovo’s sovereignty.
The agreement reached last week will see Serbia not issuing any more number plates with Kosovo cities on, and Kosovo not taking action against those using the illegal plates.
Under the new deal, Serbia will cease to issue licence plates with markings indicating Kosovo cities, and Kosovo “will cease further actions related to re-registration of vehicles,” the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell tweeted last week.
Kurti also confirmed that Kosovo would apply for EU membership in December.
(EURACTIV.rs | betabriefing.com)
Source: euractiv.com
