Kosovo declares Serbian minister 'persona non grata'

Kosovo's Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla announced the decision, which he said he had signed and forwarded to the country's competent institutions.

Svecla said the Serbian minister, through her rhetoric, demonstrated the "continuity of a state policy that for many decades has produced violence, crimes and attempts to eradicate Albanians from their homeland."

"As Kosovo's interior minister, today I issued a decision through which I declared Snezhana Paunovic persona non grata, undesirable, with a permanent ban on entering or transiting through the Republic of Kosovo. The era when Albanians were oppressed, massacred and ethnically cleansed has come to an end once and for all," he wrote on social media.

He further said that the Republic of Kosovo is a sovereign and democratic state with strong institutions that protect the constitutional order, territorial integrity and security of every citizen.

"Any attempt to revive the ideologies of ethnic cleansing or to threaten the Republic of Kosovo will be met with a firm, legal and institutional response," Svecla said.

"If I had been in Milosevic's place in 1998, I would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo. And this is the harshest qualification I have ever said. Not in the way they want to liquidate us, but in such a way that they do not feel part of Serbia and go to their mother country," Paunovic said Monday during a TV interview with a Belgrade-based channel.

Her statement also drew reactions from senior European Union officials.

Speaking at a European Commission press briefing in Brussels, spokesperson Anitta Hipper said the EU would not comment directly on individual remarks but reiterated the bloc's position.

"There is no place in Europe for rhetoric justifying and advocating for ethnic cleansing," Hipper said.

Following the reactions, Paunovic issued a statement claiming that propaganda was being waged against her and arguing that she had merely made an "analysis" while maintaining her stance reflected in her offensive remarks.

Milosevic, who led Serbia during the Kosovo conflict, died in detention in The Hague in 2006 while on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.