First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia Ivica Dacic paid official bilateral visits to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka from 2 to 8 May, during which he held talks with the highest officials of these three countries.
“The most important message for Serbia after the visits to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka is that we have three strong votes in favour of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Serbia.
These visits have major importance because they were undertaken many years after the last high-level visits. High-level visit to Sri Lanka was made now after 21 years, to India after 10 years and to Nepal after 7 years.
All these countries are the countries with which we established the Non-Aligned Movement at the time of SFRY and these countries are our friends and they support us.
In Nepal I was told that they divide their relations with other countries into brotherly relations, friendly relations and diplomatic relations. We have brotherly relations with all of these countries.
My visits were given considerable publicity, and I expect their return visits. All interlocutors have expressed their desire to exchange visits on a high level.
I have invited the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, as well as the President and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nepal to visit Serbia, while the Vice-President of India will visit Serbia in September.
All talks were quite positive. Strong support was extended and the interlocutors have stressed that they will not change their position regarding Kosovo.
Economic relations could be improved, it is essential to organize business conferences as well as to work on connecting chambers of commerce.
It is also necessary to consider abolishing visa requirements for Nepal and Sri Lanka.
It is possible to increase the number of scholarships for university education in our country, but it is also necessary to explore modalities of cooperate in the fields of tourism, pharmaceutics, medicine and defence industry.
Politically, these were very successful visits. In the past, Serbia did not take sufficient advantage of the positive legacy of the past and we allowed the other side to work with our friends, since we had not used regular channels of communication to inform them about developments.
We are planning to have discussions with all friendly countries to ensure that they maintain their positions or more precisely, not change their positions on the territorial integrity of Serbia, and we will also continue to work with those countries which we expect to revoke the recognition of Kosovo”, the chief of Serbian diplomacy stated.