Govt. to remove memorial unless there's agreement

BELGRADE -- Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dačić said on Friday evening that the Serbian government will remove the contentious monument in Preševo.

Ivica Dačić (Beta, file)

This will happen "if no agreement with local authorities is reached".

He at the same time noted that it was "illegal to set up a memorial plaque dedicated to ethnic Albanians who died in armed rebellion in 2000".

“It is definitely a provocation. I have said several times that the problems are being created deliberately and artificially, and the Serbian government does not want to make any move that would complicate the situation even further, but that monument cannot stay there,” Dačić said for the Belgrade-based TV Pink.

It would be the best if ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia removed the monument on their own and set it up at some appropriate place which is not public space, and submit a request for that, so that it could enter the legal procedure, he said.

“In this case, the law was circumvented, and that is a direct provocation, particularly for Serbs in Preševo, and for Serbs anywhere in Serbia. That has nothing to do with human rights, or national minority rights, and no state would tolerate that,” Dačić said.

At an emergency meeting, the Preševo municipal assembly decided earlier on Friday that the controversial memorial will stay in the town centre, and adopted conclusions, granting powers to the local self-government to find a legal solution for the issue.

The memorial was put up in honor of the members of the so-called Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa, and Bujanovac (UCPMB), who were killed in clashes with the security forces in 2000 and 2001.

The now disbanded terror group launched attacks against military and police personnel and civilians in the areas along the administrative line between central Serbia and Kosovo.