BELGRADE, November 12. /TASS/. The Serbian people have not forgotten NATO's senseless bombing of Belgrade some 25 years ago, so nothing in the world can make Serbia join the North Atlantic Alliance, the Balkan nation’s Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin said.
"There is no force, policy or bribe that could get the Serbs to join NATO. At least not until the people who remember exactly where they were on March 24, 1999, are dead and buried. This is the long-term consequence of NATO’s aggression," Vulin pointed out on the sidelines of an international conference dubbed "The Long-Term Impact of the Bombing of Yugoslavia on Serbian Society and the Formation of Multipolar World," which is taking place at the Russian Science and Culture Center in Belgrade.
"Back in 1999, NATO had neither political, nor economic nor military adversaries; seriously, no one in the world opposed the idea of a unipolar world. <...> In 1999, no one held NATO to its promise to Russia not to expand; no one - not a single major power or nuclear power - asked the North Atlantic Alliance about its plans and why Yugoslavia and the Serbs had been chosen as enemies; no one asked when the bombings began why it was happening and when it would end. In 1999, the unipolar world reached its peak, and that was the beginning of its end," the Serbian deputy prime minister noted.
According to him, Russia and China opened their eyes to what the unipolar world was all about when NATO forces carried out a strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, only to "apologize with a smile, saying they did not know who they were bombing."
Bombing of Yugoslavia
NATO launched a military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. The bloc's leadership claimed that the main goal of Operation Allied Force was to prevent genocide against the Albanian population of Kosovo. According to NATO’s data, aircraft from the alliance’s member states carried out 38,000 sorties during the 78-day operation.
Military experts say, citing research, that 3,000 cruise missiles were fired and about 80,000 tons of bombs were dropped, including cluster and depleted uranium munitions. According to Serbian data, the bombardments killed 3,500 to 4,000 people and injured some 12,500, two thirds of them civilians.