| Dačić: Party goal is SI |
| 5 December 2008 | 15:18
| Source:
Politika, Tanjug |
BELGRADE --
SPS leader Ivica Dačić says his party’s goal is membership of the Socialist International, as a modern left-wing party, with a reformed manifesto and personnel.
 | Ivica Dačić (Beta, archive)
|
“The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) has the support not only of PASOK and George Papandreou, but also of the Spanish Socialist Party, which is one of the strongest socialist parties in Europe,” Dačić told Belgrade daily Politika.
"We have strong support from German and Austrian social-democrats, as well as Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian parties. At the same time, we have tried to normalize relations with socialist parties from the ex-Yugoslav republics,” he said.
Dačić, who is also the Serbian interior minister, said that in about ten days he would be signing an agreement with his Croatian counterpart on mutual police cooperation.
When asked how was it possible that Europe had changed its position on the SPS in the space of just a few months, Dačić said that he did not believe that people had been sufficiently acquainted with the SPS, and that the party had actually begun to reforms as long ago as 2000.
"I don’t think that the SPS’s acceptance into the Socialist International is of seminal importance, but for us it’s symbolic. We belong there, not with the right-wing or communist parties. If there’s no room for us in the world family of socialist parties, then the essence of our existence, as a socialist party in this country, is pointless,” he said.
"[EU Enlargement Commissioner]Olli Rehn told us that the EU supported the European path that the SPS had taken and our membership of the Socialist International, regardless of the fact that Rehn is not a socialist. After many years, an SPS official was in Brussels, in the EU, which was certainly a historic moment for the SPS,” he said.
Asked to comment on Mirjana Marković’s request to inherit her late husband Slobodan Milošević’s pension, Dačić said that it was “not an issue of a pension, per se, because it was a symbolic issue.”
"We believe that regardless of the person in question, the law needs to be respected, and the issue should be resolved as soon as possible. She, like any other widow, has a right to receive her late husband’s pension, if it’s larger than hers,” he said.
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