"Serbian municipalities should join Albania and Kosovo"

Source: Tanjug

BELGRADE -- A leader of ethnic Albanians in the south has said that "if Russia can annex Crimea" southern Serbian municipalities should be given the right to join Kosovo.

A file photo of a flag of Albania displayed in Bujanovac (Beta)

According to reports, Jonuz Musliu spoke about the municipalities of Preševo and Bujanovac "uniting with Albania and Kosovo."
Kosovo itself is a Serbian province where ethnic Albanians in 2008 unilaterally declared independence - a proclamation that Serbia and Russia rejected, but many western countries, including the U.S., recognized.

Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia's outgoing government's minister without portfolio in charge of Kosovo, reacted to this to say that the statement represented "a threat to the territorial integrity of Serbia."

Vulin "urged the international community to loudly and publicly condemn such statements and show that it is against such attitudes."

“When it comes to the latest threats to the territorial integrity and wholeness of the Republic of Serbia, this time arriving from Musliu, I wish to warn that any such statement is very dangerous and could have devastating consequences in the whole territory of Serbia,” Vulin told Tanjug.

He said that statements like Musliu's can bring up a number of questions, "such as who those behind such statements are."

Vulin said that he is therefore seeking from “the international community, especially from a group of ambassadors - friends to the south of Serbia, who visit the region of Preševo and Bujanovac very often, to loudly and publicly condemn such statements.”

The minister wants them “to clearly say that they do not stand behind any idea about dissolving Serbia's territorial integrity.”

Vulin demands from the international community “to loudly condemn such behavior and in that way dispel any allegations about the statement having the support in any part of the international community.”

The PDP is an ethnic Albanian party from the south of central Serbia, and Musliu is both its leader and chairman of the Bujanovac municipal assembly.

"If Moscow wants Crimea, then Tirana and Priština should unite with the region of the Preševo Valley," he told the Presheva Jone news agency.

While delivering his statement, Musliu referred to an unconstitutional referendum held in the region in 1992 in which local ethnic Albanians opted in favor of the two municipalities "joining Kosovo."