Serbian Clergy In Kosovo Calls On Belgrade To Abandon Region's Internal Partitioning Plan

Serbian Clergy in Kosovo Calls on Belgrade to Abandon Region's Internal Partitioning Plan

All members of the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church who serve and reside in the autonomous province of Kosovo signed an appeal to the Serbian authorities to abandon its plan to partition the territory among ethnic Albanians and Serbs for the sake of resolving their long-standing conflict.

BELGRADE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th August, 2018) All members of the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church who serve and reside in the autonomous province of Kosovo signed an appeal to the Serbian authorities to abandon its plan to partition the territory among ethnic Albanians and Serbs for the sake of resolving their long-standing conflict.

The document, signed by 120 monks and nuns and 70 parish priests, was published on the official website of the Raska and Prizren Diocese.

"[Serbia's Autonomous Province of] Kosovo and Metohija with its 1,500 Serbian churches, convents, heritage sites and monuments of Serbian culture, is an inseparable part of Serbia, and the preservation of this part of the country is not an issue relating to national ideology and mythology ... but [an issue] constituting the essence of our ecclesiastic and national existence," the document said.

The clergy warned that the possible border "correction" might put the majority of Kosovo residents at the mercy of those who had never shown respect for their rights in the past.

In early August, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that he favored having Kosovo partitioned along ethnic lines as a means of avoiding further conflicts. Vucic's plan has been supported by the heads of Kosovo's 10 Serb-majority municipalities but has been slammed by the Serbian opposition. President of Kosovo Hashim Thaci has, in turn, rejected the idea.

In 2008, Kosovo authorities unilaterally declared independence, but not by Serbia, which still regards it as its Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. In 2013, the Brussels Agreement on normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo was signed as the European Union persuaded Serbia to begin cooperating with Kosovo. In 2015, an accord on forming the self-governing association of the Serb-dominated regions of Kosovo was signed. The EU-set deadline for the implementation of the above-mentioned agreements by Kosovo expired on August 4. Pristina's failure to stick to the terms of the agreements resulted in an escalation of tensions in the region.