Thaci's statement "irresponsible and untrue"

Thaci's statement "irresponsible and untrue"

In its reaction, the office stressed that this claim was "irresponsible and untrue."

Thaci was attending the burial of the remains of 27 ethnic Albanians in Suva Reka on Wednesday that the Serbian forces “committed genocide” in Kosovo.

The Suva Reka victims were killed on March 26, 1999, at the beginning of NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia, and their bodies were discovered in a mass grave in Batajnica, near Belgrade, in June 2001.

The office said in a release that “one should take care about the significance and weight of uttered words” and stressed that Thaci’s statement is “irresponsible and untrue, and does not contribute to the process of reconciliation and normalization of relations.”

The release said that the Republic of Serbia, its government and the office "always point out that anyone who committed a crime, regardless of their national or religious affiliation, should be punished and sentenced."

It added that "the Belgrade’s High Court War Crimes Department convicted four former Serbian policemen to long-term prison sentences for their involvement in the crimes in Suva Reka."

“However, we are asking Thaci and the international community what to call the mass crimes committed against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija that nobody has been held responsible for and whose perpetrators have remained without a first and last name for decades," the Office for Kosovo said, and added:

"What to call the abduction of about 300 Serbs and other non-Albanians who, according to the report by (former Council of Europe rapporteur) Dick Marty, were transported to Albania, where organs were removed from their bodies and later sold across Europe?”

The office also said that according to a Council of Europe report of December 12, 2010, the organizers of the abductions and trade in human organs were members of the Drenica Group of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army - an ethnic Albanians’ paramilitary, whose "members" included Thaci, Tanjug noted in its report.

The release said that it is barely adequate to term these crimes “genocide, because such crimes have never been seen on the territory of civilized Europe before.”

As regards Thaci’s statement that he will use the help of the United States and the European Union to exert pressure on Belgrade to shed light on the fate of persons who have gone missing in Kosovo, the Office for Kosovo said it "completely agrees that it is necessary to check all sites suspected of holding the remains of those killed in the former Yugoslavia wars, including in Kosovo and Metohija."