Serbia insists on respect for international law

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said Wednesday that he was confident that Serbia should remain insisting on respect for international law in the Ukrainian crisis, which meant that it recognized Ukraine within the borders that made it a UN member state, something that Serbia also sought for itself.

“Serbia must be adopting its positions in line with international law and its own interests, and an interest of ours is not to lose Russia as protector at the UN Security Council, but it is also in our interests not to be at odds with the EU,” Nikolic said for Tanjug before going on a summer holiday.

“Serbia is aware that by opting to side with one of the parties in the conflict, it would lose one of the two precious friends, the European Union or the Russian Federation, and therefore, both Moscow and Brussels should respect our position,” the president said.

Nikolic said he wished the hostilities in Ukraine to cease as soon as possible primarily because it was in the interests of the people who live in the territory affected by the crisis, and not just because of the specific position of Serbia’s.

“If they agree, it will be to the good of the people. If they do not agree, then it will be to the detriment of the people, as people in eastern Ukraine will suffer greatly,” Nikolic said, adding that the example of Yugoslavia had showed him how much people can suffer.

Nikolic said that pressures on Serbia over the Ukrainian crisis probably were there, but “nobody has had a word to say” to him personally so far. He stressed that given such a situation, any Serbian official should be thinking about the future of Serbia, the Serbian Constitution, the words they had said themselves and the...