"Europe underestimates danger from Greater Albania"

"Europe underestimates danger from Greater Albania"

Vulin addressed the conference to say that the precedent done by many Western countries who recognized Kosovo, ignoring Serbia's interests, represents a great danger to peace and stability not only in the Balkans but in the whole of Europe, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

"Favoring the nationalist idea of a 'Greater Albania', which must carry out its expansion in the areas inhabited by Serbs, inevitably leads to conflicts that can't be entirely localized. Europe is not working to prevent the 'Greater Albania concept', underestimating the danger to its own security, and often neglecting its own interests," said the defense minister.

Despite Serbia's efforts to make the Balkan area permanently stable, he continued, "as long as there is behavior such as the failure to implement the Brussels agreement, the unpunished violence against Serbs, the beating and the arrest of a member of Serbia's negotiating team, Marko Djuric, and the essentially unsolved issue of Kosovo and Metohija that wholly ignores Serbia's interests, there will be potential for conflict, and it will not reflect only on the territories populated by Serbs, just as it has not done thus far."

"The unpunished violation of international law in 1999, that seemed harmless, an act with no consequences, is today used as an example by separatists around the world, whose argument of a precedent is hard to reject," Vulin said.

He said that a unipolar world had chosen Serbs as its enemies, and, for the purpose of fighting against Serbs, allowed the Mujahideen to mobilize and be sent to the battlefield in Bosnia.

"The surviving Mujahideen settled permanently in Bosnia-Herzegovina where they continued with terrorist activities, making its space unstable and a potential hot spot for decades after the end of the war. By participating in terrorist attacks in Western Europe, Bosnian citizens confirmed the existence of a 'white Al-Qaeda', and once again confirmed that introducing the ideas of Islamic terrorism to Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo for the purpose of fighting against Serbs could not stop only at the hatred towards Serbs," says Vulin.

As another example of how Europe neglects its own interests and how the bill of all the consequences of not opposing the unipolar policy comes to be paid, Vulin cited the migrant crisis.

"In the long run, there is also the question of the model of integration of migrants into the hosts' society, their participation in political life, that is, whether political parties of Western Europe will be able to afford the luxury of retaining traditional values​, or will have to, as they fight for the new voters' votes, make concessions without asking how much those will cost in domestic policies, education, the security system, foreign policy, the stance towards the countries from which migrants come, and also the EU enlargement policy, which directly affects Serbia," Vulin said.

"Security challenges are common to us, but the answers to them often are not," he said.

The minister stressed that Serbia will continue to pursue the policy of preserving its own interests and of consistent military neutrality, "convinced that only an independent policy dictated by nobody from the outside guarantees security and development of our country and people, but also helps all neighbors in preserving stability and peace."

"One side is enough for war, peace takes at least two," Vulin stressed, according to the statement.

On Tuesday, the Serbian defense minister met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to discuss new acquisitions of Russian weapons.