"No changes to Dayton without Serbs' consent"

"No changes to Dayton without Serbs' consent"

"The RS will last forever. It was not created by the Democratic Party or the Serbian Renewal Movement, they wanted to destroy it," Dačić told the gathering, organized ahead of the March 16 elections alongside the party's coalition partners, the Party of United Pensioners of Serbia and United Serbia.

He warned the international community "not to toy with changes to the Dayton Accords, because they have already provoked one war that way." "We had sanctions because of the RS, we were pressed not to help and other parties backed that pressure, when we sacrificed ourselves. There can be no changes to the Dayton Accords without the consent of the Serb people," he said.

Reflecting on Serbia's talks with the EU, Dačić said that "their purpose had not been to help Kosovo Premier Hashim Thaci."

"We did not have the negotiations to help Thaci, on the contrary, you know that I would very much like to arrest him for what he did to Serbs in Kosovo," he added.

Commenting on the arrest of Oliver Ivanović, one of the leaders of northern Kosovo Serbs, the outgoing prime minister said that he received information from Ivanović's wife that he was "placed in the same cell with an ethnic Albanian."

Ivanović's defence team asked that the defendant be released pending trial or to be at least transferred to the northern Kosovska Mitrovica detention unit which is home to Serb majority population as he cannot even take a walk outside his detention unit because of security reasons, but the EULEX judge in Prištiina denied this request.

On this occasion, Dačić warned the international community and Albanian government in Priština that they "should not abuse Serbia's constructive attitude in the negotiations."

He welcomed the presence of Aleksandr Babakov, a special advisor of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the convention, and expressed gratitude to the Russian Federation and Putin himself on their support to Serbia and its people.

The convention of the coalition headed by SPS was attended by leader of the Socialist Party from RS Petar Đokić, leader of the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro Srđan Milić and former presidents of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia Zoran Lilić and Milan Milutinović.

Dačić said "Serbia saw integration with the EU as a journey, not as the finish line, and did not want its citizens to be sacrificed along the way, but rather for them to emerge as the biggest winners."

As for reforms, Dačić referred to them as necessary, adding, however, that they ought to be in the interest of the people, and not work contrary to their interests, the news agency reported.

He further reiterated that the Socialist Party supported Vojvodina's autonomy, but added that this autonomy "should be inside Serbia, not directed against Serbia."