HAVANA, May 21 /TASS/. Serbia wants to become an EU member without damaging its ties with long-standing partners like Russia, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said in an interview published by Cuban newspaper Granma on Thursday.
"We support historical ties with Russia and are not planning to break them," Nikolic stressed. "As for the European Union’s conflict with Russia, we have a position of principle: we are not going to apply EU sanctions to Russia," Nikolic said adding that Serbia used to experience the burden of sanctions on its shoulders in the past. "But we are not going to sever our relations with the European Union and will try to become its full member," the Serbian president stressed.
As for Kosovo, President Nikolic stressed that Serbia would never make concessions on Kosovo’s sovereignty. "They are trying to make us recognize the independence of Kosovo and Metohia but we are telling our EU partners and the whole world that we will never recognize Kosovo’s session, Nikolic went on to say.
Kosovo had been Serbia’s autonomous province since 1999 when NATO intervened in the Kosovo conflict t militarily by taking the side of the region’s Albanian population. In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally proclaimed its independence from Serbia.