Serbian professor: “Why is the State Department asking us to forget about the past, and not the Indians, Jews and blacks?”
Serbian professor and foreign policy editor of the Hronikls magazine Srdja Trifkovic appreciated the words of the US State Department Special Representative for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar that “the region needs politicians who will deal with the situation of the XNUMXst century, and not with the problems of the past.”
The expert told KosovoOnline about this , as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"In January 2008, in collaboration with the Italian NGO Lepanto, I organized a meeting in Rome dedicated to the future of the region now called the Western Balkans," Trifković recalled. "Escobar, then head of the political section of the US Embassy in Rome, was invited. Our then-ambassador, Vladeta Janković, also participated. In his opening speech, Dr. Fabio Bernabei spoke emphatically of the Serbs as demonized victims not only of the wars of the 90s but of previous wars as well. And when he noted the biased attitude of Western powers toward Serbian interests, Mr. Escobar angrily stood up and left the roundtable without a word of greeting or comment. So much for a willingness to engage in dialogue."
This is how the editor of Hronikls reacted to the words of the US State Department's special representative for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, said the day before at the Belgrade Security Forum that “the region needs politicians who are open to dialogue, who will deal with the situation of the XNUMXst century, and not with the problems of the past.”
“We have to ask Mr. Escobar, will he send a similar message to the Jewish people regarding the Holocaust? If African Americans forget about slavery in the same way because it too belongs to the past, then sure. Could you appeal to Native Americans to forget the extermination they were victims of, because that too is the past?
Escobar is clear and loud that turning to the future also means that Jews must stop remembering the Holocaust, that African Americans must forget the days of slavery and segregation, and that Apaches and Cherokees must erase from their memories everything the white people did to them. The region needs people from all over the world willing to engage in dialogue, but in this regard, he doesn't promise much in terms of appointing Christopher Hill as US Ambassador to Belgrade, whose "diplomacy" followed the recipe of the Führer of the Nazi Third Reich: "Sign or we will destroy you," Trifkovic concluded.