Kosovo is a dimmed area in the heart of Europe and an abode for criminals and radical extremists, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin said on Thursday as he took the floor at a session of the UN Security Council, which discussed the Kosovo peace settlement.
“The feebleness of the agencies of law and order and the security system on the whole, the region (Kosovo) represents a dimmed area in the heart of Europe, which the Islamic radicals, as well as members of the criminal community use as an abode and a transit station,” he said. “This facilitates the use of the territory by extremist groupings for the recruiting and training of militants,” Churkin went on. “Kosovo has a place among Europe’s top three as regards the number of militants warring on the side of IS per capita of the local population, and that’s why if any measures are taken to check the situation, they are sure incomplete,” he said.
He voiced concern over the current discussions in Kosovo over “a so-called agreement on demarcation of the border with Montenegro.”
“Nationalistic calls for a reunification of Albanian lands, including the ones located in Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Montenegro and the appeals to creater a ‘great Albania’ are getting increasingly louder,” Churkin said.
“Russia calls for keeping this rhetoric in check, as it is prone with a further deepening of inter-ethnic contradictions not only in Kosovo but also in the region at large,” he said.
Churkin described the situation in Kosovo as continually unstable and marked by unending attacks on the Serb population, as well as outrages on religious shrines and historical heritage sites. In addition, he noted the Kovovan authorities’ attempts to deprive the EU mission in the field of supremacy of law of the executive powers and to transfer them to the local government.
Such actions cannot help causing concern, especially in the connext of the heinous crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army during the armed conflict in the 1990’s, he said.
Source: TASS
