A unified Serbia is not official government policy said Serbian Deputy Energy Minister Zorana Mihajlovic in response to comments by Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin.
In an interview for Serbian magazine Politika on Sunday (10 July) Vulin said that “the only way for the Balkans to remain stable is for the Serbs to live in one state”.
“All conflicts in the Balkans begin with the discrimination against Serbs. In a country where the rights of Serbs are respected, there will be no problems with a ‘Serbian world'”, Vulin claimed.
Asked by journalists in Sarajevo about Vulin’s comments, Mihajlovic responded they do not represent the official position of the government of Serbia.
“[Vulin’s] statement is not the official policy of the Government of Serbia…As a citizen, he has the right to express all his wishes, aspirations and dreams, but such a thing is not the official position of the Government of Serbia”, Mihajlovic said.
The US Embassy in Serbia issued a statement against Vulin, writing that his ideas are against the Dayton Peace Agreement.
“The Dayton Peace Agreement preserves peace and stability. All the governments and all the presidents of Serbia supported it. The comments of the Minister of the Interior about the unification of all Serbs into one state are not in accordance with the Dayton Agreement and contradict Serbia’s integration into European structures,” they wrote on Twitter.
Vulin has made similar statements in the past. In May last year, he said that President Aleksandar Vucic has started the process of unification of all Serbs in the region under one state, and that such process cannot be stopped.
In September 2021, Serbia celebrated for the first time “The Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag”, a holiday established in the Republika Sprska of Bosnia-Herzegovina by its secessionist and genocide-denier leader Milorad Dodik.
Over the last year, Dodik has made several attempts to secede from Bosnia, while Vucic has rallied Serbs in northern Kosovo.
