FM talks about "strategic goals" for 2015

FM talks about "strategic goals" for 2015

“These are the countries that are also our traditional friends, such as Russia, China, and countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia,” Dacic said as he summarized the results achieved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) over the year and spoke about its new activities, in Belgrade on Monday.

We will focus on preservation of regional stability and normalization of relations with countries in our neighborhood, especially with our closest neighbors, in order to avoid certain conflicts and to slowly resolve problems of the past, he said.

One of the problems in relations with Croatia is the status of Serbs, particularly the issue of domicile and residence, said Dacic, adding that a request in relation to those matters had been sent to Croatia and that an answer was expected to arrive soon.

“Our goal will be to have our foreign policy helping our internal policy, that is, work for the purpose of our whole country’s development, which means that, in the context of the planned diplomacy reform, a separate sector will be dealing with the issues of economy and attraction of foreign investors,” said Dacic.

Dacic said that in the previous period, the MFA had been fully committed to accelerating the pace of European integration and promoting cooperation with the countries in the region and with the most influential countries and other partners in the international community.

He pointed out that he had met with more than 50 foreign ministers, both bilaterally and on the margins of regional and international meetings, over the previous eight months.

The ministry was also involved in securing international aid and assistance to help Serbia recover from the flooding that hit it in May, and it undertook visa liberalization activities which helped increase the number of tourists in Serbia, Dacic said.

Speaking about the ministry’s future activities, Dacic said that a trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of Serbia, Albania and Italy would probably be held in Italy on January 23.