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Serbia is not joining NATO for obvious reasons, says Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic

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BNN Correspondents
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Serbia is not joining NATO for obvious reasons, says Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic

Aleksandar Vucic said on Monday that, Serbia is not joining NATO, due to logical and well-known reasons. He said this at a joint news conference with Czech Republic President Milos Zeman.

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Vucic said, “We are not a member of the North Atlantic Alliance for obvious reasons. You know that only 24 years ago, 19 NATO states bombed this country. That sentiment is very much alive here. About 2,500 people, including 82 children, were killed here. The only thing we want is to be ourselves, to be a problem to anyone, not to take what doesn’t belong to us and not to hurt anyone”.

According to reports, NATO began a military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, On March 24, 1999. NATO leadership claimed that prevention of genocide of the Albanian population in Kosovo was the main reason for the operation called Allied Force. NATO said, its aircraft flew 38,000 sorties to carry out 10,000 bombing strikes, during the 78-day operation.

According to Serbian data, 3,500-4,000 people were killed by these bombardments and 10,000 others got injured. Two-thirds of the victims were civilians. The material damage had totalled to $100 billion.

According to Serbian experts, NATO dropped over 15 tons of depleted uranium during the bombings in those three months. Post these bombings, Serbia ranked first in Europe in terms of the number of cancer cases. Over 30,000 new cancer cases were registered in the first ten years after these bombings. This resulted in the mortality rate from 10,000 to 18,000 patients.

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