US ambassador triggers Serbs with "side of history" comment

The daily Politika writes this on Friday, adding that, as in most other cases when US Ambassador Kyle Scott crossed the imaginary line of diplomatic propriety toward Serbia, or when his words hurt the feelings of a large number of citizens here, reactions followed this time as well - both from officials and from the public.

"Serbia has always been on the right side of history. The Serb people never made the wrong choice," Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin said - he was the first to react to Scott's tweet claiming that Serbia was "on the wrong side of history on the issue of Venezuela."
Foreign Minister and First Deputy PM Ivica Dacic then said the ambassador's statement was inappropriate, and "a classic example of how a big power talks to others."
"This is not the appropriate way to talk to Serbia. Neither the US, nor Britain, nor Germany, nor Russia, nor China will be determining our foreign policy," Dacic said, among other things.
According to Politika, "his excellency has really hit a nerve with a large number of citizens of Serbia, as seen in the comments left on websites and social networks."
"In this case, the US ambassador made two parallel mistakes. One was to express himself in that way in the host country, treating it as a country that is not capable of finding the right place in history. This is not the job of a diplomat or an ambassador," said former Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic.
He added that another question that has been raised why Scott thinks, on behalf of his country, that meddling in the internal affairs of a UN member state (Venezuela), removing its legally elected president, and replacing him with a new one that has not yet been elected, is a practice that history should ascribe value to,...