Marta Kos: Glorifying war criminals has no place in EU candidate countries

The European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, declared in Montenegro that glorifying war criminals has no place either in the European Union or in candidate countries for membership, as the Serbian newspaper Danas reports. The statement was made during the meeting of the Berlin Process foreign ministers in Pržno, near Budva, where Montenegro holds the presidency this year.

Kos said that the events after the death and burial of Ratko Mladić showed that the wounds of the wars of the 1990s are still open. She stressed that the path towards the EU means confronting the past and respecting the victims, adding that politicians have a special responsibility to contribute to reconciliation, not to deepen divisions.

Montenegro’s Foreign Minister, Ervin Ibrahimović, joined her position, saying that respecting the decisions of international courts is part of the European values that Montenegro must follow. “A war criminal cannot be glorified, war crimes cannot be silenced,” Ibrahimović said, recalling that the decisions of international courts must be respected.

Mladić, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, died on August 27 in UN detention in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence; an international court finally convicted him of the genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992–1995. His death caused political polemics in Montenegro after parliament speaker Andrija Mandić sent condolences to Mladić’s family; the opposition launched an initiative for his dismissal, but the September 24 session was not held for lack of a quorum.

On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the opening of the camp, Kos and Ibrahimović visited the former Morinj camp in the Bay of Kotor together with Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman, laying wreaths in honour of the Croatian prisoners held there in 1991. “The events of recent weeks showed that we still have a long way to go to reconciliation in Southeast Europe,” Kos said, calling for the spirit of joint remembrance in Morinj to spread throughout the region — a message that also applies to Serbia, where Mladić’s burial was accompanied by honours and public glorification.

Kos also said that Montenegro, which has provisionally closed 18 of the 33 negotiating chapters, is in the final phase of the talks and that several more chapters could be closed at the next intergovernmental conference in mid-October — calling on Podgorica to maintain its political focus and continue the reforms.