BELGRADE, February 2. /TASS/. Serbia has no plans to join NATO, despite numerous reports and opinions, and it will maintain military neutrality, the president of the Balkan republic, Aleksandar Vucic, told a special parliament meeting on Thursday.

"This morning, I listened to nonsensical statements by fake patriots who said we have been leading Serbia toward Atlantic integration," Vucic said. "We are not. We will stick to military neutrality, and, unlike those who destroyed our army, we are building an army of our own," he emphasized.

NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, and dragged on for 78 days. The operation, dubbed Allied Force, cited "the prevention of the genocide of Albanians in Kosovo" as its main cause. According to NATO statistics, during the operation, the Alliance’s aviation carried out 38,000 sorties, over 10,000 of them being bombing runs.

According to Serbian officials, the bombing resulted in the deaths of 3,500 to 4,000 people, while some 10,000 people were injured, two-thirds of them being civilians. Material damage was upwards of $100 billion.

During the three months of bombing, NATO dropped 15 metric tons of depleted uranium as bombs on Serbian soil. After that, Serbia became the number one country in Europe in cancer incidence, as during the first 10 years after the bombings, some 30,000 people came down with cancer in the country, and between 10,000 and 18,000 of them died.