FM: Region should build ties based on interests

Source: Beta, Tanjug

BELGRADE -- Countries in the region should focus on finding common interests in order to overcome recent incidents, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has said.

Dacic addresses reporters on Friday (Tanjug)

Dacic on Friday addressed his regular monthly news conference to say that these incidents "once again strained relations between Serbia and Croatia and Serbia and Albania," Beta reported.
"The Serbian-Croatian and Serbian-Albanian relations are important for the whole region. Overall, we all need to focus on trying to define common interests and avoid 'the drone syndrome'," he said, in apparent reference to a football game incident last October.

"There are historic things that we do, and then the things that take us two steps back," he remarked.

Dacic also stressed that Serbia "wants to have best possible relations with Croatia as a neighbor and a very important country in the region - while Serbia is certainly the most important country in the region - because our relations are very important for the overall stability in the region."

He then "expressed hope that the latest incident when a Croatian flag was burned by Hague indictee Vojislav Seselj and statements of Serbian Minister of Labor Aleksandar Vulin will not damage earlier agreements between the Serbian and Croatian sides," the news agency reported.

"We wish to separate those issues that need to be talked about more, that are open issues from the past, from those concerning current bilateral relations and cooperation on our European path, and establish common interests and common projects for the future. The nature and course of our relations will depend on the possibility of approaching that in a truly responsible manner."

He added that it was "important to move toward normalization of relations."

Asked whether he thought that Vulin's statements about Zoran Milanovic and Ante Gotovina, when he referred to the latter as "Ustasha," contributed to the deterioration of relations between the two countries, Dacic said he "cannot accept that Vulin's statement caused this whole incident," adding that "all was not perfect before, either," and that "the first statements of the kind came from the Croatian side."

"It is very important that various incidents do not cast a shadow on the publicly pronounced desire for improving our relations," Dacic said, adding that he received assurances from the Croatian side that "bilateral relations and open questions should not be the subject of our relations in the international arena" .

The foreign minister also said that Serbia "expressed dissatisfaction and handed a note" to Albania because of anti-Serb provocations in Tirana after the Albania vs. Armenia football match, during which a Serbian flag was burned, and banners displayed reading, "Serbia, welcome to hell."

"This is not the first time, but certainly we need to refrain, as much as possible, from unnecessary provocations and incidents that burden our bilateral relations," said Dacic.

"We must look to the future and whether we can overcome some of the emotions that apparently still exist in our relations. It is always better to build relationships on interests and not on emotions. That's what the EU was built on. Certainly not on love," he added.
During the same news conference, Ivica Dacic announced that a meeting of foreign ministers of Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey on energy security would be held in Budapest on April 7.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama will visit Brussels on April 21, where they would meet to discuss joint participation in regional infrastructure projects, he added.

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier, Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine Ertugrul Apakan and member of Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine Heidi Tagliavini will visit Belgrade on April 8, Dacic said, according to Tanjug.

The Serbian foreign minister also announced that he would attend a UN conference in Qatar on April 12 and that Foreign Minister of Zambia Harry Kalaba would visit Serbia on April 14.

Dacic added that his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier will visit Serbia on April 28.

"This is our most important foreign policy activity in April," Dacic told reporters.

He also said the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in talks with Greek Foreign Ministry to prepare a meeting between Serbian and Greek prime ministers, Aleksandar Vucic and Alexis Tsipras.

Dacic announced that a new meeting within the Brdo Initiative will be held in Slovenia on April 23, adding that EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and foreign ministers of France and Germany, Laurent Fabius and Steinmeier, will be among the participants.

Edgars Rinkevics, the foreign minister of Latvia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), will visit Belgrade on April 22, while the visit by Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn "is being worked on," according to Tanjug.

Luxembourg will take over the rotating 6-month EU presidency from Latvia in July.