On the occasion of second anniversary of the beginning of the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Dr. Vojislav Kostunica stated:

"Today, when we, as a state and people, are looking ahead to a period when we, as equal partners and full members of the world family of nations, shall contribute to prosperity, peace and prevention of the evil that has befallen us several times in the past century, we have a duty to look at our past without embellishments, without evil inside us, without a lust for revenge. We are obliged to remember the truth about the past in the name of the present and future.

"We must remember the victims and the horrors of the NATO's air strikes. Memory is a remembrance of victims, but the memory is a wish that there should be no more victims and reminder that nobody should ever again kill others but also humanity in itself. History does not repeat itself if one remembers. Evil done to us and that we have done to others will not be repeated if it is etched on our memory.

People live, dream, create, think and feel for the future. Our future is cooperation with the international community. We see our state as one of the houses in global village, which is called world, house which as all the others has its yard, dead and living people who respect friendly relations and who watch the house in order to maintain their village.

Our cooperation with all international organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is obviously necessary, would be built on rotten foundations if either they or we refused to accept the truth and the reality of both the past and the present. Otherwise, the future would not be realistic, certain or sincere, either.

Truth is that the NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days. That is not political structure. The NATO's "humanitarian" bombs killed "about 1,500 civilians in Yugoslavia, including 81 children. The "humanity" of depleted uranium is slowly killing soldiers of other states and nations, too. We shall not drop our eyes before each other, and if we face up to the truth of the Grdelica ravine, tragedies on a religious holiday and on the bridge at Varvarin, the horror of the new mothers looking up at the caving ceilings of Belgrade's Dragisa Misovic maternity hospital, Surdulica, Murino, Aleksinac, the refugee convoy on the Djakovica-Prizren road, if we face up to the truth that NATO bombs killed mostly Serbs, but that they killed also ethnic Albanian children, women and old men, everybody would find cooperation easier.

The truth is that many of the evils in the Balkans, especially in Kosovo, might have been avoided if a rational government and national policy had been pursued in the past 50 years, and certainly in the past 10 years.

Making wrong moves and avoiding the truth can and does produce further humanitarian disasters in the Balkans. All potentials of FRY's fledgling democracy are directed at preventing such disasters and ensuring the survival of multiethnic Balkan states which will be linked by their minorities rather than pushed by them into fresh suffering and wars. Democracy, in its way, needs help, not obstacles, and requires those who have assumed responsibility under the U.N. Security Council's decision for the protection of Balkan security should do their job, not to guard their own personal safety. The FRY wants to start the new century without hate or evil, to step into the future with truth and reconciliation", it is said in yesterday's statement by President Vojislav Kostunica on the occasion of second anniversary of the beginning of the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia.