“Open a second front.” Orbán reveals: Clinton wanted Hungary to attack Serbia

In 1999, during the Kosovo war, then US President Bill Clinton wanted Hungary to open a second front and attack Serbia – Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was then serving as head of government, said on Saturday during a meeting with voters in Szombathely.

President Clinton asked Hungary to open a second front and attack Serbia or “at least fire at them from Hungary all the way to Belgrade,” the Hungarian Prime Minister revealed. Orban emphasized that he rejected the call. – If we had a prime minister who could only say: “Yes, sir!”, we would be drawn into a war – said the politician.

The Prime Minister said that he asked Clinton about what would happen to the Hungarians living in Vojvodina (a multinational, autonomous region in the north of Serbia – PAP) and whether he would also shell their cities. – We agreed to discuss this issue at the NATO summit, but the Americans never returned to this topic, Orban said on Saturday.

Summing up his statement, the Hungarian Prime Minister noted that it is possible to say “no” to the war. He thus referred to his objections to the EU's aid to Ukraine, which is attacked by Russia, and to supporting US President Donald Trump's peace initiatives.

The war in Kosovo, then a Serbian province, lasted in 1998-99 and ended with the intervention of the North Atlantic Alliance, which in March 1999 carried out airstrikes on targets located in the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1999, Yugoslav forces left Kosovo, which then declared independence in 2008. Serbia and several dozen other countries – including China, Russia and five EU member states – still do not recognize Kosovo's sovereignty.

Jakub Bawołek from Budapest (PAP)

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