UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday blasted the West's double standards in handling international relations.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, Vucic criticised U.S. President Joe Biden's double standards in his speech at the General Debate.
"Here, in this hall, only two days ago, we could hear from the president of the United States the most important principle in relations between the countries -- the respect for their territorial integrity and sovereignty, and only as the third most important factor, he mentioned human rights. And, it seemed to me that everybody in this hall could support that. I, as the president of Serbia, supported that with unhidden jubilance," he said.
"A few hours after his speech I had to see, in these premises, the president of the so-called Kosovo, who is considered by the most powerful part of the West the president of an independent country, originated, by the way, by the secession of the territory of the Republic of Serbia," he said.
For the first time, unprecedented in world history, the most powerful 19 countries of NATO made the decision, without the involvement of the UN Security Council, to brutally attack and punish a sovereign country on European soil, said Vucic, referring to NATO's bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999.
NATO said that the issue of Kosovo is a democratic issue and that it would be resolved in accordance with the UN Charter and other international law documents. But in 2008, the illegal decision on the secession of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia was made without a referendum or any other democratic forms, he said.
"Worse than anything is that all those who committed aggression against the Republic of Serbia lecture today about territorial integrity of Ukraine, as if we did not support the integrity of Ukraine," Vucic said.
"But when we ask them (the West) about the territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia ... the answer is the one that all of you, representatives of smaller countries in the world, heard on countless occasions: do not go back in the past, look toward the future," he said.
Principles do not change from one circumstance to another. Principles apply to all, he said. "Or we will end up in the deepest divisions in our history."
