Albanian ambassador given strong demarche

Albanian ambassador given strong demarche

The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that such, obviously carefully planned incidents like the flyover of the drone with the flag of a Greater Albania above the pitch where a high risk football match was taking place, are seriously detrimental to the efforts to build relations based on trust and cooperation in the region, a statement said, Tanjug reported.

Serbia is committed to nurturing good relations with its neighbors and expects the same approach from them, and it will not tolerate such provocations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned.

The Albanian ambassador was informed that Serbia expects Albanian officials to unambiguously condemn the incidents that occurred late on Tuesday, as the first necessary step toward overcoming problems, the release states.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs qualified the incident as a carefully devised and premeditated provocation.

Flying the drone with the flag of a Greater Albania displaying the territory which covers both parts of Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Macedonia is an unprecedented provocation in football pitches and it had to be planned in advance, so there can be no talk of a spontaneous incident staged by hooligans, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in its first reaction to the incident.

Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dačić underscored that the gatherings in Albanian environments after the incident late on Tuesday do not contribute to calming tensions and instead create the atmosphere of fear everywhere, especially in Kosovo and Metohija, which sends a message for the umpteenth time to members of the non-majority ethnicity that they are not welcome.

Serbia cannot suffer the responsibility for irresponsible provocations of the Albanian guests and it will continue working on development of good neighborly relations which it believes are the only way to overcome potential problems, Dačić said.

He announced that all measures have been implemented so as to inform international partners about the aspects of the case and to once more call for implementation of the same standards for everyone.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed gratitude to the members of the national football team who did their best to appease the situation in the field, defending and promoting in the best possible way the values Serbia advocates, states the release.