Head of DS foreign policy board steps down over PACE vote

Head of DS foreign policy board steps down over PACE vote

Democratic Party (DS) officials and Serbian MPs Vesna Marjanović and Nataša Vučković voted in favor of suspending Russia's voting rights in this organization.

Vučković, one of the vice-presidents of the opposition party, told a news conference on Monday that the DS MPs believed their vote was "in Serbia's interest."

In a statement for the Beta news agency, Spasojević said that he "deeply disagreed with this position of the deputies," and added he believed it ran contrary to the country's foreign policy interests and represented "a drastic deviation from the state-making and nationally responsible policies that all DS leaders conducted in the past and are conducting, on behalf of the party and the thousands of its members."

He described as devastating the fact that relevant party organs were circumvented on the occasion, and the practice of harmonization of positions on key issues violated, while the conclusions on the Ukrainian crisis, adopted by the DS Foreign Policy Committee, were ignored.

"I resigned in order to defend the integrity of the Foreign Policy Committee, the dignity of all its members, and my own reputation," said Spasojević.

The PACE vote on Thursday saw a member of the URS party join the two DS MPs and vote in favor of revoking Russia's voting rights and removing that country's officials from the organization's governing bodies. The United Regions of Serbia (URS) reacted by distancing itself from the gesture, and saying their MP acted "scandalously."

The Democratic Party (DS), however, said the manner in which two of its members voted was "their personal decision," and that the party's presidency "took no stance on the PACE vote on this subject."

The statement issued on Friday added that the two DS members "contributed with their work to the sanctions against Russia being milder than originally proposed."

On Wednesday, all seven Serbian MPs taking part in another PACE session abstained from voting on a resolution that blamed Russia for the crisis in Ukraine.

The head of the Serbian delegation, Aleksandra Đurović of the ruling SNS party, told Tanjug on Friday that the MPs received recommendations to vote "according to the position of the state of Serbia," and explained that this meant abstaining when it came to the resolution on the situation in Ukraine, and voting against sanctions targeting the Russian Federation.

But on Thursday, three Serbian officials voted against, three in favor, while one abstained.

According to Đurović this occurred "because some were guided by the position held by the political groups they belong to in the Council of Europe."