“Togo is the 15th country to annul its recognition of Kosovo,” Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivica Dacic announced on Pink TV tonight. The goal is for the number of countries which annulled their recognitions to decline below 97, which is half of 193 – the total number of UN member states, he added. Serbia would keep going until Kosovo realizes that the matter is not over and that it must compromise.
The note on Togo’s annulment arrived on June 28th – on Vidovdan, and this is the 15th country to withdraw recognition courtesy of Serbia’s lobbying – Dacic stressed.
Dacic announced two weeks ago already that another country had annulled the recognition, however, without revealing which country.
„I talked about it, but I did not officially confirm which country has annulled its recognition. I thought about doing it tonight because President Vucic and I agreed to do it the other day – when the Quinta countries issued a statement urging us to stop doing this. We didn’t want it to seem like we are basing our policy on spite, but generally speaking, we are doing our job,“ the Serbian Foreign Minister revealed tonight on the Hit Tvit talk-show on Pink TV on why he initially refrained from revealing the name of the latest country to annul its recognition of Kosovo.
He also shared a conversation he had with the US ambassador, who allegedly asked him: “Why are you doing this? You are humiliating the Albanians?”
Dacic argued that 23 countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence since then, so the question one should ask instead is – “How come the states which did that then were not humiliating Serbia?”
When asked why he is collecting recognition annulments, Dacic replied that Kosovo’s leadership must stop believing that the issue of Kosovo’s recognition is „a done deal“.
„Each UN meeting begins with representatives from Kosovo saying that 116 countries have recognized them,“ he said and then emphasized:
„Our goal is for that number to drop below half of the total number of UN member states. There are 193 of them, they should drop to below 97. They cannot behave however they want to. They have to strive towards an agreement, a compromise, and stop thinking that this is a done deal. It turned out that this is not a done deal and that is the reason why we are doing all of this.“
The head of Serbian diplomacy claimed that the number of countries which recognized Kosovo is now below 100, because there are countries such as Egypt and Peru that, although they have recognized Kosovo, do not vote for Kosovo. “It’s a frozen recognition,” Dacic explained.
Dacic said that he knows that the vote of the United States is more important than Togo’s vote, however, he added that its vote is still important when voting in the UN.
„They (Kosovo) cannot be a member of the UN because Russia will veto it, but what if Russia does not veto it?! That is why we must have the majority of UN members on our side,“ he stressed.
„We will continue our activities regardless if someone does not like it,“ Dacic concluded and posed two questions to the Western governments: “Why don’t you stop lobbying for Kosovo? Why doesn’t Kosovo cease trying to become a member of international organizations?”
The Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not reacted yet.
According to Belgrade, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Palau, Madagascar, the Solomon Islands, Lesotho, Suriname, Granada, the Union of the Comoros, Burundi, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Sao Tome and Principe, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Papua New Guinea have annulled their recognitions of Kosovo so far.
Togo is a country in West Africa. Previously, Dacic’s colleague from Pristina, Enver Hoxhaj shared the news that Togo recognized Kosovo back in 2014.
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