BELGRADE, December 27. /TASS/. Serbian Patriarch Porfirije on Tuesday called on Serbs and Albanians to achieve peace and mutual understanding in Kosovo and Metohija.
"What we need first of all is mutual understanding, co-existence, peace for Serbs and Albanians. Serbs and Albanians have been living together in these territories for centuries: Serbs have lived in Kosovo and Metohija for 15 centuries, and Serbs and Albanians have lived here together for 4-5 centuries. If there is goodwill, you can find a way to live together and a way to have room for everyone," he said as he addressed the public with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. "God forbid that it comes to clashes. It won’t get anyone anything good."
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church likened the Patriarchate of Pec with the Vatican and invited people to imagine that someone prohibits the Pope to travel to the Vatican.
"The whole world would rise up to defend the Pope. Is there another church leader in the world who can't get into his home?" he continued. "I’m asking the Albanians and the world’s great powers to help to preserve peace."
Vucic and the patriarch discusses the situation in Kosovo and Metohija after Pristina banned the church leader from entering the Serbian province before Christmas.
The situation in Kosovo deteriorated sharply on December 6, when the special forces of the unrecognized territory, accompanied by patrols of the European Union Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), began to seize the premises of election commissions in the north of Kosovo and Metohija. The Serbian population rebuffed the Kosovars, who fled across the Ibar River. On December 8, some 350 police officers from Kosovo invaded the Serb-populated north of the province in armored vehicles and blockaded the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. On 10 December, Kosovo police in Kosovska Mitrovica arrested a former Serb policeman on trumped-up charges. In response, the Serbian population took to the streets and barricaded highways in several settlements.