Kosovo was granted full International Olympic Committee (IOC) membership on Tuesday, rubber-stamping the Balkan region’s first Games appearance at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but angering Serbia, who accused the IOC of political bias.
The region, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after NATO went to war to halt the massacre and expulsion of Albanians by Serbian forces waging a two-year counter-insurgency under then-Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, became the 205th member of the IOC.
Belgrade refuses to recognize Kosovo, saying the territory, which has a majority Albanian population, is a heartland of the Serbian nation and the country’s Olympic committee launched a protest in October, when Kosovo was granted provisional IOC recognition.
While Kosovo welcomed the news, Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic called it an unacceptable “political decision.”
“We see this decision as unacceptable and unprincipled, therefore maintaining that it contravenes the Olympic Charter,” Dacic said in a statement.
“The act represents a biased politicization of sport, while the International Olympic Committee, a universal organization dedicated to the development of sport and the promotion of understanding and friendship, has assumed the role of a political arbiter,” Dacic said. “The Republic of Serbia maintains that the International Olympic Committee should not be a forum making controversial political decisions, but rather a body which should yield unity and understanding instead of creating new divisions.”
Serbian Minister of Sport Vanja Udovicic, a three-time Olympic medal winner in water polo, said the IOC’s decision set a dangerous precedent for the world of sport.
“As a sports minister, I maintain the decision is not good, primarily for international sports, because it gives room for future precedents that could jeopardize world sports,” Udovicic said in a statement. “What are the motives to make such a decision and grant full membership to a so-called state, not recognized by the United Nations?”
Although IOC recognition is usually preceded by UN recognition of the state, it is not a prerequisite.
“It had never been done before and it comes the year before the Olympic Games taking place in Brazil, a country which has not recognized Kosovo as an independent state,” Udovicic said. “I regret that sport has become a field for politically motivated decisions and it will be very difficult to preserve the basic principles of sport in the future after this kind of precedent.”
IOC president Thomas Bach said the Serbian Olympic Committee had accepted Kosovo’s recognition and there was no official protest against the decision.
“The Serbian Olympic Committee president [Vlade Divac] expressed that he is not happy with the decision, but he accepts it in the interest of the athletes,” Bach said. “This gave me the opportunity to thank Mr Divac publicly for this true sportsmanship and that he is putting the individual interests behind the interest of athletes of Kosovo.”
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