Nikolić: Up to EU to decide on Serbia's entry

Nikolić: Up to EU to decide on Serbia's entry

"If the EU decided to admit Serbia without Kosovo, this would mean that it would not want Serbia at all. The EU would then say: we are admitting Serbia, but not in the form in which that country is a member state of the UN," Nikolić warned in the interview to the Vienna-based daily that was published on Saturday.

"We allowed to our diplomats to take part in conferences to which Kosovo Albanians are also invited. We are ready to give Kosovo a broad autonomy, but not more. We cannot recognize the independence of Kosovo, regardless of all possible repercussions," Nikolić said, noting that many UN member states did not recognize Kosovo either.

Asked whether Serbia would recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, he said that Serbia has very good relations with both the EU and Russia.

"We will not interfere in the politics of the great powers, and we advocate for the adherence to international law, and the same rules for all," the Serbian president said.

At the same time, he denied that he is concerned that Russia which is citing Kosovo's precedent for the annexation of Crimea, as Die Presse writes, could recognize Kosovo.

That will never happen. But why wouldn't we consider the matter from a different viewpoint?Why don't you look the situation from the EU's perspective? The EU does not recognize the secession of Crimea from Ukraine, but most member states recognize the independence of Kosovo, he noted.

Nikolić warned that we will be witnessing further separatist tendencies in Europe.

Replying to Die Presse journalist's comment that, contrary to Crimea, Kosovo did not join another state, and that there had been severe human rights violations in Kosovo by the Serbian forces, Nikolić said that when one wants to justify certain decision, then they always manage to find arguments in favor of that move.

In contravention of international law, European countries together with the United States bombed Serbia in 1999, and hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled or killed by Albanians, he noted.

All Serbian war crimes do not come even close to what happened in Kosovo for just one day in March 2004… If someone set Vienna downtown on fire, I would say that the world's culture were burnt down. That happened in Kosovo as a result of the Albanian demolition of the Serbian medieval monasteries and churches, he underscored.

Nikolić said that he takes as a starting point that Vienna will back Serbia's further EU integration.

He noted that the history of the two countries is intertwined, and that we did not just have war conflicts, but that Austria is an important country which was a home to distinguished Serbs.