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News Article :-
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on Monday that Washington’s reports last week warning of a big build-up of Serbian troops on the Kosovo border “were not fully accurate.”
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview, Vučić said: “We always appreciated all the reports that were coming from NSC (the National Security Council), (the) White House, and all the other institutions that are coming from the United States. But the real issue is that these reports were not fully accurate.”
The White House said last week that it was concerned, warning of an “unprecedented” build up of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks, and mechanized infantry units near the Kosovo frontier and calling for an “immediate de-escalation.”
“A year ago, we used to have 14,000 people at the administrative line with Kosovo. Few days ago, we used to have less than 8,400. Today we have 4,400, which is a regular number of people,” Vučić said.
“We always hear, and we always listened when our partners were asking us to de-escalate a situation and we did it this time, although there were no reasons for a big worry, because we didn’t need any kind of wars, any kind of clashes with NATO,” he added.
When asked why the Serbian government moved more troops to the border, Vučić said that Serbia’s army “follow the situation in the field, and they move our forces in a way that they believe it can be… the most useful and they have their own operations and everything else but I did not sign even a high alert for our army people.”
The long fractious ties between Serbia and neighboring Kosovo flared in late September, when 30 armed men opened fire on a Kosovar police patrol in the village of Banjska, in northern Kosovo, before barricading themselves inside an Orthodox monastery. The ensuing hourslong shootout left one Kosovar police officer and three gunmen dead.
Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani pointed the finger at Belgrade for inciting the violence.
A top Kosovo Serb politician, Milan Radoicic said this weekend that he took part in the gun battle, Reuters reported.
In a letter sent to Reuters by his lawyer, Radoicic, who is wanted in Kosovo and lives in neighboring Serbia, said he “personally prepared logistics for the defense of Serb people” and received no help from the Serb authorities. Radoicic is under US sanctions for suspected links to organized crime.
When asked if Radoicic will face accountability that the European Union is demanding, the Serbian president said: “Of course, Serbia will held accountable all the people that committed criminal deeds and that we might find on our territory … prosecutors will do their job,” but said that the issue started from the Serbs wanting to “protect themselves.”
“I’m not going to defend a killing of an Albanian police guy and I didn’t do it. I condemned that. But I’m saying that Serbs were arr
