Metropolitan Amfilohije expects consistent standards from UN

Serbian Press Agency SRNA, Bijeljina, 30-09-2006 15:31:07

Podgorica, September 30 (SRNA) - Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral expects "a more healthy and normal understanding of the Kosovo and Metohija issue" to predominate in the United Nations and that there will be no implementation of double standards.

"We must remain hopeful and count on Russia to assume a sober position on the basis of her experience, geopolitical interests and God's justice because the fortune of one people cannot be created upon the misfortune and degradation of another," Amfilohije told reporters in Rodos on the last day of the Fourth International Forum on the "Dialogue of Civilizations".

The Metropolitan said that it is clear from contacts with the Serbian state leadership that none of them is publicly or privately ready to accept secession and resigned to the loss of Kosovo.

"Everyone shares a full consensus that Kosovo must remain a part of Serbia and that Serbia can accept the existence of an autonomy," he said, adding that this is understandable because Kosovo for the Serbs is the center of their historical, church, national and state consciousness.

"There are thousands of Serbian churches there; our entire history is there," said Metropolitan Amfilohije.

Assessing that the present dialogue between Serbs and Albanians is brimming with negative energy, he emphasized that dialogue must rest on absolute respect for the other.

"If, on the other hand, it is based on negating the other, on completely destroying him, eradicating him from the region, from memory and from history, then that is demonic dialogue, the dialogue of destruction, of nihilism," he said, adding that in the event of an imposed solution, the Serbs would leave and the destruction of monasteries would continue.