Former British Prime Minister Anthony Tony Blair in Pristina, he was delighted with the "positive things" in Kosovo and defended it NATO's decision a quarter of a century ago to bomb FR Yugoslavia without a UN mandate.
"Being here evokes deep emotions. I congratulate the people Kosova on the courage and unwavering determination to use it for the liberation of the country. I was convinced then that it was the right thing to do, and today I stand with the people of Kosovo with conviction," Blair said at a joint conference with the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani.
Blair, one of the main leaders of the bombing at that time, should also speak before the Assembly of Kosovo. The unveiling of a statue of Blair in Uroševac was announced for Wednesday.
This continues the tradition in Kosovo of building monuments and naming streets after living people, known only in dictatorships. Bill Clinton has a monument and boulevard in Pristina, and George Bush has a street.
Thank you Osmani.
President Osmani addressed Blair with chosen words: "The democratic world will once remember the sentence 'this is the right thing', 25 years later and every day since that day, we thank you for guiding the compass of history despite the challenges." In the XNUMXs, your role as prime minister was decisive, so just as you were a hero of the people, of democracy, today you are also a hero of peace for the right decision of that time."
"You saved us from extermination." You said that the intervention in Kosovo was a struggle between good and evil. "Your legacy in Kosovo is a legacy of hope, freedom and partnership," said Osmani.
All Vučić's advisors
Tony Blair, who since leaving politics entered the rich world of "consulting", was among the first foreigners to the advisors of Aleksandar Vučić after the Serbian Progressive Party came to power.
According to Blair's advice, the "delivery unit" system was created, a kind of parallel government, from which the later long-term prime minister and today's parliament speaker Ana Brnabić emerged.
At that time and later, Vučić claimed that Serbia does not have a contract with Tony Blair's consulting firm because it does not pay a dinar for services.
It is a public secret that Blair's advice to Vučić was paid from the United Emirates, which was also reported by the Guardian in 2015.
Regardless of the fact that he was the main proponent of the bombing of Belgrade in 1999, Blair also made a name for himself in Serbia, the Guardian wrote.
The newspaper then reminded that Vučić was not only the Minister of Information and the man who advocated the arrest of Blair, Clinton and others at the time of the bombing, but also the reviewer of Vojislav Šešelj's book "The English Faggot Tony Blair".
Blair is only one of a number of the engines of the 1999 bombing who later received Vučić's pardon. He sat with Clinton on the podium before the election, which his wife Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was a guest and speaker at a progressive rally on the anniversary of the bombing in 2017, when God knows how he praised Vučić.
