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On the proposal of Deputy Prime Minister Enver Hoxhaj, Kosovo’s government on Thursday approved an initiative to criminalise those who deny crimes committed by Serbian forces during the independence war of the late-1990s.

Hoxhaj said that Kosovo Serbian political representatives in the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party, as well as state officials in Serbia, had long hidden the truth and denied proven crimes committed by Serbia in its former province.

“From the political and moral aspect this is a double crime, so I think we should undertake a legal initiative and take concrete steps to punish such statements, positions and individuals that deny Serbia’s crimes and genocide in Kosovo,” Hoxhaj told the government meeting.

He added that most Western countries treat denials of crimes and genocide as a crime and as an insult to the victims, their families and the nation that was subjected to such crimes.

The decision comes after Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj fired the ethnic Serb Minister of Local Government, Ivan Teodosijevic, for describing Kosovo Albanians as terrorists and fabricators of massacres.

On Friday, he appointed the head of the North Mitrovica Municipal Administration Adriana Hodzic as Teodosijevic’s replacement.

Dismissing the “so-called humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo” of the late-1990s, he called the infamous Recak massacre of 1999 “fabricated”, and said: “Albanian terrorists are the ones who made all this up and committed the biggest crimes in Kosovo”.

Serbian officials strongly backed the sacked minister and repeated the same allegation.

“These Albanian politicians should be arrested for the crimes they committed during 1990- 2004 and answer questions about why they expelled 247,000 Serbs from Kosovo,” Marko Djuric, head of the Serbian government office for Kosovo, told Serbia’s public broadcaster, RTS on Monday.

“When they arrest themselves, they can claim the right to put anyone else on trial,” he added.

In a press release issued by Djuric on Thursday, he also used the insulting term “siptari” for Albanians, referring to Kosovo’s decision as “cynical statement of Albanian terrorists and criminals.”

The spokesperson for EU foreign affairs, Maja Kocijancic, said that “there is no room for denying or relativising events that occurred in Recak, Kosovo, in January 1999.”

She added: “By respecting victims, authorities should show restraint and work sincerely for a right assessment of the past. The region needs reconciliation, stability and normalisation of relations.”

Teodosijevic’s dismissal came after Haradinaj fired another Kosovo Serb government official on March 25.

Deputy Justice Minister Vesna Mikic was dismissed for accusing NATO of “genocide” on the 20th anniversary of the start of the military alliance’s bombing campaign on March 24.

The NATO air campaign forced Serbia to withdraw its forces from Kosovo in 1999, and created the grounds for Kosovo to declare independence in 2008, which Serbia has vowed never to recognise.