Vuciq says he honours victims both Serbs and Albanians, but no Batajnica claims

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vuciq confirmed Thursday that at a closed meeting with civil society representatives in Belgrade on 3 October, he honoured Albanian war victims of the 1990s.

“I will rise for every Serb, for every Albanian, for all others who died in any war conflict in the hope that there will never be another war,” Vuciq said in response to Radio Free Europe's question of Radio reporter after a meeting with European Commissioner for Enlargement Oliver Varhely in Belgrade.

Vuciq said that during the meeting with representatives of non-governmental organisations, one of the participants asked all in attendance to stand up and honour the killed Albanians.

I won't say if it was a trick or not, I don't care, I'll always get up. I think basic courtesy dictates this to everyone. The fact that some people don't have morals, and come up with things they agreed to not make public, this speaks of their morale”, Vuciq added.

Serbia's president did not answer the REL question if he would honour the slain Kosovo Albanians at the site of the mass cemetery in Batajnica, near Belgrade, where their remains were found.

The Fund for Humanitarian Law (FDH) addressed the request to the Serbian president to honour more than 700 Albanian victims in Batajnica near Belgrade following the publication of information that he, along with representatives of civil society, on 3 October in Belgrade at a closed meeting, with a minute of silence honored Albanian victims, who were buried in the mass cemetery in Batajnica.

It was a meeting with representatives of the National Convention for the EU, a group of nongovernmental organisations monitoring Serbia's accession process, which was held under the rules of the “Chatham House”, which means participants can discover information they have received, but should not reveal the speaker's identity.

In 2001, 744 Kosovo Albanian troops who were killed by Serb forces were exhumed in Batajnica, about 20km from downtown Belgrade.

Their remains were transported from Kosovo to the Special Antiterrorism Unit range in Batajnica in 1999 and buried in a mass cemetery. It's one of the largest mass graves found in the former Yugoslavia.