http://www.novosti.co.yu/

Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade
November 27, 2004

[from the print edition]

BISHOP ATANASIJE JEVTIC AT PUBLIC FORUM AT THE FACULTY
OF MACHINE ENGINEERING IN BELGRADE

We are not against Europe

Serbs don't want to be a mere label on the realization of Albanian goals.
When they tell us "Kosovo or Brussels?" our answer should be: Gentlemen, we
are giving back the invitation. The Italians already have a saying: Defiant
as a Serb.

"We were recently in Brussels where the Serbian Orthodox Church came under
attack for failing to support Serb participation in Kosovo and Metohija
elections. They fell silent when we responded: Gentlemen, two years ago we
did vote and what did we get? Albanians taunting our ten people in the
parliament. If you put 30 of them there now they will still be taunted. You
need to pass some decrees to prevent their marginalization, that is the key
thing. We don't want to be a mere label on the realization of Albanian
goals. After all, the Albanians didn't vote for years and no one asked them
why they didn't vote; on the other hand, we are being forced to vote.

"This discrimination of common sense by what is today called free Europe is
truly becoming intolerable.When they tell us "Kosovo or Brussels?" our
answer should be: "Gentlemen, we are giving back the invitation, now leave
us in peace. But they want to save us - at any price.

"Some think: when we join the European Union or Partnership for Peace, all
our problems will be solved. As I said in Brussels, Partnership for Peace is
an introduction to NATO and that same NATO bombed our children for 78 days.
Why? Because of one maniac.

"And I also said that in Tvrdos Monastery we already have a fresco of little
Milica Rakic, the three year-old little girl whose parents were Serbian
refugees and who died by their bomb and the inscription under the fresco
says: 'Milica Rakic, newly martyred by NATO'. And we wrote 'NATO' in the
Roman alphabet [not in Cyrillic].

"We are not against Europe but we are against what it is forcing upon us and
against the way they are doing it because we know that no one will be
accountable for the consequences of what is being done. The most that will
be said is 'Sorry' or someone will write in their memoirs that a mistake was
made. They need to show a little bit of heart and stop underestimating us.
This free Europe is constantly lecturing us as if we were not free. In fact,
they don't want us to be free, they want us to be free only us much as they
will allow us to be.

"I was amazed recently by the story of a Jewish woman from an Orthodox
father and a Jewish mother who came recently to our church in Paris to be
baptized. They asked her: 'Why?' 'Because only the Serbs are not
anti-Semites,' she replied. And the Italian who drove me to Decani just the
other day told me that the Italians already have a saying: 'As defiant as
Serb'."

By M.R.