Deputy minister Vesna Mikic comes from Kosovo\u2019s Serb minority which accounts for about 5 percent of the country\u2019s population of 1.8 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe NATO alliance committed a deliberately planned genocide against a sovereign country that fought Albanian terrorism inside its own borders,\u201d Mikic said on her Facebook account on Sunday, marking the 20th anniversary of the NATO bombing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NATO carried out air strikes in 1999 against the now defunct Yugoslavia, comprised of Serbia and Montenegro, to halt a brutal crackdown against Kosovo Albanians by Serbian security forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 78 days of bombing, under the terms of an armistice, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ordered his troops to withdraw from Kosovo and be replaced with NATO control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mikic\u2019s post sparked criticism in the predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo where most people praise NATO for halting the two-year war and clearing the way for its independence in 2008. As many as 4,000 NATO peacekeepers are still deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mikic was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haradinaj dismissed the deputy minister with immediate effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn Kosovo government there will be no place for individuals, despite their ethnicity, to denigrate our common euro-Atlantic values,\u201d Haradinaj said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 13,000 thousand people, mainly local Albanians, were killed in the 1998-99 war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kosovo has earned recognition from the United States and most EU countries, but Serbia and its major allies Russia and China remain adamantly opposed to Kosovo\u2019s independence. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PRISTINA, March 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj has fired the country\u2019s ethnic Serb deputy justice minister after she called NATO\u2019s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia a \u201cplanned genocide\u201d. Deputy minister Vesna Mikic comes from Kosovo\u2019s Serb minority which accounts for about 5 percent of the country\u2019s population of 1.8 million. \u201cThe NATO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16256"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}