Patriarch: No recognition or partition of Kosovo

“Any kind of recognition or division of Kosovo-Metohija is out of the question,” the Patriarch said at a meeting dedicated to the 2004 March pogrom of Serbs, dubbed 'Kosovo - the most expensive word' and held at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade. “If a just solution is not found for Kosovo, it will become a powder keg,” the Patriarch warns. The Patriarch said that Kosovo will be Serbia's as long as Serbia has churches in Kosovo-Metohija, adding that the SPC will do everything to stay there and be with its people. The Patriarch said Serbia's monasteries, churches and houses in Kosovo have been destroyed, its population has been expelled from the territory and things have been done to Serbs that no civilized people would ever have even thought of doing, such as plowing somebody's cemeteries. “This is a culmination of lack of culture and transgression,” the patriarch said, adding that the motive behind it was to claim that it was someone else's rather than Serbian. “Everything is happening before the eyes of and with the blessing of a cultured Europe,” the Patriarch said, adding that the idea of Kosovo and the Kosovo covenant did not die, it lives, and to presere Kosovo, we need unity above all. Oliver Antic, envoy of the Serbian president, said that a civilization is measured by the ratio of law to justice and Serbs have experienced anti-law at work many times and are seeing it taking place in Kosovo for quite a while. He said that the Jews have kept the idea of Jerusalem alive for 2,000 years and the Serbs nourished the idea of freedom of Kosovo for 500 years and are proud of the idea of freedom. According to Antic, Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic carries this idea in his heart and he will not let it “go out,” adding that Nikolic has drawn the red line and is involved in all of his diplomatic activities only because of that. “That which has happened and is happening in Kosovo-Metohija is neither law nor justice, and where there is no law or justice, there certainly can be no civilization either,” he said. Assistant Director of the government's Office for Kosovo-Metohija Mirko Krlic recalled the 1,700 years of the Edict of Milan and the ending of the killings of Christians and burning of their churches in the Roman Empire. “Now, 17 centuries later, Christians are being killed and churches burned down and only in one place in the world they live in catacombs again,” Krlic said while speaking about the suffering of the Serbs in the southern Serbian province, adding that history remembers builders but it also remembers destroyers.