The European Union on Tuesday condemned the “inflammatory” statement of a Serbian government minister supporting the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians during the 1998-99 war.

Snezana Paunovic, Minister for Local Government, on Monday told the Belgrade-based Kurir that she “would ethnically cleanse Kosovo” had she been in the place of Serbia’s then strongman leader, Slobodan Milosevic, in 1999.

“I would not liquidate the Albanians as they are now trying to ethnically cleanse Kosovo [of Serbs] but in a way that anyone would … leave and go to their mother country,” said Paunovic, who was born in Kosovo herself.

The Serbian government regularly accuses the Kosovo government of trying to drive out its remaining Serb population.

The minister is from the ranks of the government’s junior coalition partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia, the party Milosevic founded in 1990 and led until he died in a Hague detention centre in 2006, awaiting a war-crimes verdict.

An EU spokesperson condemned the comments and called on leaders on all sides “to act responsibly and refrain from any inflammatory rhetoric.

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“Our main position and key principle is that there should be no place, and there is no place in Europe, for rhetoric justifying and advocating for ethnic cleansing,” Anitta Hipper, an EU Spokesperson, told media in Brussels.

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In Kosovo, Andin Hoti, Minister of Social Welfare, accused Paunovic of promoting the same ideas “as your ideological father [Milosevic] did”.

“Anyone who calls for ethnic cleansing today is not a threat only to Kosovo. It is evidence that Serbia has not been liberated from Milosevic’s genocidal ideology and criminal politics, which brought wars, massacres and historic shame,” Hoti said.

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Natasa Kandic, a Serbian human rights activist and founder of the Humanitarian Law Centre, which documents the violations of human rights during the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, said Paunovic’s comments turn Serbia back towards a dark past.

“When Serbian government minister Snezana Paunovic presents ethnic cleansing as a political solution, she is not speaking for a Serbia on the path to the European Union, but for the ideology of the wars of the 1990s,” Kandic said on X.

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The Free Citizens Movement, a liberal Serbian opposition party, urged Prime Minister Duro Macut to dismiss Paunovic.

“A person who justifies the expulsion of people solely because of their nationality cannot be a member of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. It is especially dangerous that such messages come from the Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government, who should guarantee the equality of all citizens before state institutions and respect for the Constitution and the law,” the party said.

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Meanwhile, Kosovo declared Serb minister Snezana Paunovic a permanent persona non grata over her remarks.

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