Selakovic: Government to discuss recalling of Ambassador Zurovac as early as tomorrow

19. May 2021.
Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic said this evening that the Serbian Government would consider the decision on recalling Ambassador Nikola Zurovac tomorrow, who was urgently summoned from Warsaw for consultations due to a petition in connection with which he did not consult with the Ministry.

"I was supposed to be in Poland today, we arranged a serious visit, but the day before that the officials started cancelling the meetings when we found out that the main reason for this was our Ambassador", Selakovic said, emphasizing that everywhere in the world what an Ambassador did was considered to be an action backed by the state.

The Minister said that it was his decision for the Ambassador to be summoned for consultations, and that the Government would decide on his replacement. He emphasized that the decision he made had nothing to do with the content of the petition and that it would have been the same in any case, because, he said, the Ambassador had failed to carry out consultations, "and in diplomacy every word is binding".

He added that the Ambassador should have, among other things, been aware of the attitude of the Polish people on LGBT issues.

The visit to Warsaw, as he stated, was not cancelled but postponed and he had already received new dates from the Polish colleagues.

"Poland is extremely important for us", Selakovic told Kurir TV, adding that this was a country whose economy ranked sixth in Europe, whose voice was important for Serbia in UNESCO as well, when defending the holy sites in Kosovo and Metohija ...

Selakovic described the apology of Czech President Milos Zeman for the bombing as a brave move "to which no person belonging to the Serbian nation could remain indifferent".

"The apology has several dimensions, we understand it as a kind of belated justice and it was made by the Czech President who was the Prime Minister at the time of the aggression. It is an acknowledgement of our current policy, and a huge acknowledgement of Vucic. On the other hand, Zeman pointed to the traditional friendship between the two peoples", Selakovic said.

He added that this was also an emotional moment, a historic day and an indicator of how strong Serbia was today, but also that Zeman was not only strong in words but also in deeds.

Selakovic assessed that the Brdo-Brioni summit showed that Pristina could be identified as the culprit and disruptive factor for the first time.

"Those who changed our borders, who looked at us as cattle and themselves as gods, tried to portray us as a disruptive factor", Selakovic said, paraphrasing a Latin proverb.

The Minister also said that he did not want to comment on the ideas from Pristina to document the crimes committed by Serbs, and emphasized that they, by doing so, showed how little they cared about the dialogue.

"That this is so was confirmed by the epilogue of the Brdo-Brioni summit and Stoltenberg's statement, the epilogue of that were fantastic meetings and an extraordinary visit to the Czech Republic and everything on that occasion, but the epilogue are also highways, hospitals, schools, museums, the Church of Saint Sava", Selakovic concluded.