First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia Ivica Dacic met today in Colombo with Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe.

In the talks, both sides expressed pleasure with the decades-long traditionally friendly Serbia-Sri Lanka relations and their readiness for the intensification of bilateral political dialogue at high and top levels, as well as promotion of cooperation in all areas. Prospects for development of cooperation in the economy were underlined in particular while the interlocutors, in this context, agreed that direct communication between entrepreneurs and chambers of commerce was highly important, noting the necessity to organize exchange of visits.

Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe underlined that the people of Sri Lanka had fond memories of Tito, while the Serbian Foreign Minister pointed out that former SFRY President Tito had visited Sri Lanka on two occasions, in 1959 and again in 1976 during the Non-Aligned Summit held there.

Minister Dacic took the opportunity to convey to the Sri Lankan Prime Minister the gratitude of the Serbian Government, Parliament and people for Sri Lanka’s position concerning non-recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of “Kosovo”, also expressing his belief that the country would maintain this position in the future as well.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe emphasized that, considering the problems they had faced with secessionist tendencies in their own country, Sri Lanka attached particular importance to integrity of states, as well as that it would not change its position concerning non-recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of “Kosovo”.

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First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia Ivica Dacic had talks today with Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka Karu Jayasuriya.

Minister Dacic and the Speaker of Sri Lankan Parliament discussed the prospects for promotion of the two countries’ bilateral relations, and parliamentary cooperation in particular.

In the talks they noted that the relations between Serbia and Sri Lanka were traditionally friendly, dating back to the Non-Aligned Movement and lasting to the present day. The sides expressed mutual good will and readiness to take tangible steps, in the period to come, towards the enhancement of, above all, parliamentary cooperation between the two countries.

Mr. Speaker of Parliament stressed that Sri Lanka attached great importance to parliamentary diplomacy. He conveyed his readiness to pay an official visit to Serbia and extended an invitation to the Speaker of National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, Maja Gojkovic, to visit Sri Lanka.

Minister Dacic thanked his collocutor for the position of Sri Lanka concerning non-recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of “Kosovo”, expressing his belief that this position, grounded in international law, would be maintained in the future as well.

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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.

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