Serbia Will Not Join NATO, President Vucic Says Can't Forget Children Victims Of 1999 Bombings

Presiden Serbia Aleksandar Vucic. (Wikimedia Commons/European People's Party)

JAKARTA - Serbia announced it would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the country's leader said because of the bad experience it had experienced.

Serbia will not join NATO, because it cannot forget the children killed during the alliance's 'aggression' against it in 1999, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said at an election rally in Kikinda.

"I believe that Serbia should not join NATO. Serbia is a free country and a militarily neutral country. Serbia will defend its own land and sky", Vucic said, launching TASS on March 22.

"But let me tell you something: our job is to forgive and our job is not to forget. Don't forget 11-month-old Bojana Tosic, killed in Merdare, near Kursumlija, don't forget little Milica Rakic, killed in Batajnica, and don't forget little Sanja Milenkovic, killed in Varvarin", said Vucic.

"We have no right to forget this. We will be much stronger than we were then when irresponsible, arrogant, and presumptuous people bombed us and waged a war of aggression against us and our country", Vucic said.

The NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 lasted 78 days. The alliance's leadership argued that the main reason for the operation codenamed 'Allied Force' was the prevention of genocide against the Albanian people in Kosovo. According to NATO sources, its aircraft flew 38,000 sorties and carried out 10,000 bomb attacks.

The bombings killed, according to different estimates, 3,500-4,000 people, and left about 10,000 others (two-thirds of them civilians) injured. Material losses reached 100 billion US dollars.

During the three months of bombing, NATO forces dropped 15 tonnes of depleted uranium on Serbia in the form of bombs and shells. After that, the cancer rate in the country jumped to the first rank in Europe. In the first ten years after the bombings, about 30,000 developed cancer, and an estimated 10,000-18,000 of them died.