“We should go to war over Kosovo if necessary”

Source: Press

BELGRADE -- Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci needs to know that by attacking Serbs in Kosovo he is also attacking Belgrade, Serbian Deputy PM Ivica Dačić told daily Press.

Ivica Dačić (Tanjug, file)

He added that Serbia could not stand by peacefully and watch that.

Dačić on Wednesday stated that nobody in Serbia must say that Kosovo was lost and that they would not go to war over it.

“A red line for Belgrade is Hashim Thaci’s armed assault on Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija,” he was quoted as saying.

“Thaci needs to know that by attacking Serbs in Kosovo he is attacking Belgrade as well. Serbia cannot and will not watch it peacefully,” the deputy PM pointed out.

He stressed that if Turkey could say that an attack on Sarajevo was an attack on Istanbul, then there was no reason “the attack on Kosovska Mitrovica is not an attack on Belgrade”.

Dačić assessed that rejection of a possibility of war would be a wrong message to Thaci because a “balance of fear” was necessary for the sake of security in the region. He explained that the “balance of fear” was the only reason why a war never broke out between the U.S. and the USSR.

Democratic Party (DS) deputy leader Jelena Trivan told Press that our country should not fight for anything with war because the people would lose the battle.

“Serbia cannot afford itself a luxury to lose another generation in wars because there will be no Serbia then. Therefore we should fight all next battles with intelligence and diplomacy,” she said.

Military-political analyst Miroslav Lazanski believes that the use of force is a part of diplomacy and points out that “this is one in a scale of statements in which Dačić is expressing his position on the situation in Kosovo”.

“Dačić’s position is hard, but right in my opinion. Not a single state diplomacy is successful if it is not supported by military force. It takes two to have a war and there is a question what we would do if someone attacked us. If NATO does not want to go over the barricades by force, what would happen if Serbia set a clear line regarding some other issues as well? If the Americans say ‘stick and carrot’, because the carrot itself is not enough, which in translation means that we need to show that we are ready to use the force we have at our disposal,” Lazanski was quoted as saying.

Political analyst Milan Nikolić also thinks that calls for the use of military force are a part of the international politics, but that Dačić’s statement is directed at the Serbian public.

“Every country has the right to defend its territory with force, even the international law allows it. It’s a different issue that it is not smart at the moment as far as our interests are concerned. It is partially a pre-election talk, a message that should show that somebody is a bigger patriot than somebody else in order for a part of the electorate to like them,” he stressed.

Military analyst Aleksandar Radić says that the deputy prime minister and interior minister’s message is “elegantly packed for domestic use but it is not applicable in the situation Serbia is in”.