"Only thing missing was bomb" - president

Source: B92, Beta, Tanjug

BELGRADE -- Top Serbian officials believe that the Serbia-Albania football match incident was a deliberate, planned provocation aiming to destabilize Serbia and the region.

Nikolić is seen at the stadium on Tuesday night (Beta)

President Tomislav Nikolić said the incident - when a Greater Albania flag was flown above the pitch, attached to a small drone - meant that "an assassination was carried out against the establishing of friendship between Serbia and Albania."
The president added that "the only thing missing was an explosive device in the craft," while Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić said that the goal was to "humiliate the Serbian nation," and cause "long-term instability in Serbia and the Balkans, and impact the daily political situation in Serbia."

"Sport games are no place for making provocative political messages. This is about promoting unscrupulous and unfeasible ideas about 'a Greater Albania', which could have been expected to encounter a strong reaction at the stadium and across the country. Serbia has done everything to leave the past behind and to develop friendly relations," underlined Nikolić.

He said that Serbia had expected the upcoming visit of Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama to be a sign of establishment of "excellent relations - but obviously, it will take Albania decades, if not centuries to become a normal country, without hatred towards Serbia".

Yesterday's "mindless action should be strongly condemned by the national leadership of Albania and its public" believes Nikolić.

"The only thing missing to get an impression there were ties with the world terrorist number one was an explosive device in the craft," the Serbian president was quoted as saying.

He added that "particularly worrying is the fact that extremist hate messages were sprayed on the Visoki Dečani monastery (in Kosovo) and that hundreds of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo participate in terrorist campaigns in Iraq and Syria."

Earlier in the day, Aleksandar Vučić said that "the Albanian extremists' intent was to show Serbia as a country intolerant towards diversity and to humiliate all its citizens."

"We will not accept the assessment that everyone is equally guilty," Vučić said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia has strongly condemned the incident and stated that the "deliberate political provocation" was carried out "with intent to cause riots in Belgrade that would cast a shadow on the fact that Serbia has been successfully fostering cooperation in the region."

"Serbia cannot be held responsible for the irresponsible provocations of Albanian guests and will continue to work on the development of good neighborly relations, which it believes is the only way to overcome potential problems," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Later in the day, it was announced that the Albanian ambassador in Belgrade was summoned to the ministry where he was handed a demarche. The diplomat did not wish to make any statements for the media as he left the building.