MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos is attempting to pressure Belgrade into forming a cabinet that Brussels finds acceptable, Milica Durdevic Stamenkovski, Minister of Family Welfare and Demography of Serbia, said in an interview with TASS.
"Statements by the European commissioner, responsible for EU expansion and Ukraine’s restoration, Marta Kos, phrased as an ultimatum, are malevolent and hostile to Serbia. This is an unacceptable attempt to pressure and blackmail, directed at forcing our country to form the future government in accordance with the wishes of those whose will does not come from the people and is not validated by election results," she noted.
Earlier, Kos said that Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin should not be part of the republic’s new government due to his close ties with Russia. The Serbian minister reiterated that shaping the cabinet of ministers is the domestic affair of any sovereign state.
"The right to form the executive branch is one of the basic democratic principles enshrined in the UN Charter which strictly forbids any meddling in countries’ internal affairs. Above all, this provision must be observed by international organizations, such as the EU, with its founding documents directly noting the necessity to respect the sovereignty and constitutional order both of member and candidate states," Durdevic Stamenkovski emphasized.
Sanctions against Vulin
Earlier, a source told TASS that the European Union had moved to sanction Vulin following his speech at the European Parliament where he made a number of statements about relations with Brussels and Moscow. The source also said that Brussels demanded that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic dismiss the politician from his post in the government.
In the European Parliament, Vulin stated that Serbia would never engage in war with Russia, even for the sake of EU membership. He noted that Serbia has been fulfilling "every wish and demand" of the European Union for 20 years to no avail, while EU membership was promised to Ukraine and Moldova, neither of which fulfilled any conditions.
Vulin reiterated Serbia’s refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow, saying the conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided had the Minsk Agreement been respected. "Serbia will not do something so low as imposing sanctions on Russia because of a conflict that could have been avoided," he said. He also told TASS that Brussels conceived a plot to topple Vucic with active support of Western intelligence.