A senior official of the opposition Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) told Radar weekly that the Serbian authorities are acting like a Rio Tinto shareholder. Pročitaj više

Borko Stefanovic, deputy SSP leader, said he never saw any government act the way the Serbian authorities are towards some “this controversial, obviously harmful, with this much attention as if it is their own child”.

“They weren’t elected to front for some company but to be above the companies and anybody’s interests,” he said.

According to Stefanovic, experts made it clear that there can be no guarantees of avoiding a situation which could lead to serious health hazards. “There is no technology to prevent that and we don’t have a state that can control it,” he said.

Stefanovic said the economic benefits for Serbia will be very low compared to the hazards. “I don’t understand how they don’t see that all of Serbia is against the project. So why are they pushing it,” he added.

He said that explanations for the support to Rio Tinto’s Jadar project include personal benefit, support from the West for the authorities and a source of strategic resources.

Stefanovic said the authorities are using child-like arguments in their campaign to justify the Jadar project. “They said we’ll ask the German authorities, then the German Greens, to guarantee the sustainability of the project. Then the Germans says: we can’t, Rio Tinto has to and Rio Tinto says: we can’t the Serbian government has to and around we go. No one want to give guarantees because there are none,” he said. He added that the perseverance of the authorities in promoting the project would be unusual in much more orderly countries.

“They love Rio Tinto as if it were a baby that they’re raising,” he said.