site.btaSerbian President at UN Session: Line between Peace and Conflict Increasingly Blurred

In his speech at the UN General Assembly's 81st session in New York on Wednesday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the line between peace and conflict is becoming increasingly blurred, while the consequences of clashes between global and regional powers are increasingly affecting even those countries that are not directly involved, Serbia's public broadcaster RTS reported.

According to Vucic, such an environment poses a huge challenge for small and medium-sized countries such as Serbia. He said the international system as we know it no longer exists; today we are witnessing a new order. The Serbian president added that the world is increasingly structured around two main centres of power and that there is a growing number of powerful regional players with significant political, economic, military and technological capabilities seeking to shape their own environment and influence wider global developments on their own terms.

The biggest problem today is not the lack of rules or political principles, but the fact that they were not respected in the past and are not being respected now, Vucic said. He also said that it is no longer possible to close the Pandora's box that was opened by violations of the UN Charter and the principles on which the current world order was until recently based.

According to him, most of the countries which, over the past two days, have called for respect for the principles of international public law, especially when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, are blatantly and recklessly silent about the fact that they themselves have taken part in trampling on it. He added that he was referring to all countries that have recognized Kosovo's independence.

Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former province of Kosovo, declared in 2008. Belgrade and Pristina have been holding talks on normalizing relations since 2011, with the European Union acting as mediator.

Vucic said that the wounds inflicted on international public law are becoming deeper and more severe. The order based on respect for the UN Charter and the law deriving from it no longer exists; it was destroyed by those who divided the territories of other countries in the name of their own political and economic interests, the Serbian president stated.

He also addressed Serbia's European path, saying that much remains to be done before the country can become a full member of the EU. He thanked the European Union, and especially European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, for every form of assistance they have provided to his country.

He stressed that although full EU membership remains a strategic priority, processes such as enlargement fatigue among both individual EU member states and the candidate countries themselves cannot be ignored. Serbia's European path is a clear indicator of the length and complexity of this process, Vucic said.

Although the country has been an EU candidate since 2012, it has not opened a new negotiating chapter for almost five years, due, among other reasons, to insufficient progress in the area of the rule of law and its failure to align its foreign policy with that of the EU.

The Serbian service of Radio Free Europe recalled that two months after the opening of the latest negotiating chapter, the war in Ukraine began, while Serbia failed to align its foreign policy with that of the European Union and did not impose sanctions on Russia. This was a key reason for the standstill in accession negotiations at the time, while in the meantime the rule of law in the country deteriorated.