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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Gratitude to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka on principled support to Kosovo-Metohija

Belgrade, 8 May 2018

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic was on official bilateral visits to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka from 2-8 May, during which he talked with the top officials of the three countries.

Dacic pointed out that the most important message for Serbia after these visits is that we have three solid voices in favour of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Serbia.

The First Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia explained that these visits are of great importance because they came after many years since the last high level visits were held.

Speaking about Sri Lanka, Dacic said that this was the first high-level visit in 21 years, in India the first in 10 years and in Nepal in seven years.

According to Dacic, these are all countries with which the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia founded the Non-Aligned Countries Movement, and these countries are friendly and very sympathetic to us.

Dacic said that he was told in Nepal that they share relations with countries on fraternal, friendly and diplomatic relations, and our country has fraternal relations with all these countries.

He said that his visits were given great publicity, adding that he expects return visits by officials from these countries.

The First Deputy Prime Minister stressed that all his interlocutors accepted the offer to make high-level exchange visits with Serbia.

Dacic said that he invited the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to visit Serbia, as well as the President and Foreign Minister of Nepal, while the Vice-President of India will come to our country in September.

All talks were very positive. Serbia got strong support, and Dacic’s interlocutors stressed that they would not change their position on Kosovo's unilaterally declared independence.

The First Deputy Prime Minister estimated that economic relations could be better, with the message that it is very important to organise business conferences and to work on connecting the chambers of commerce.

Also, as he said, Serbia needs to consider lifting visas to Nepal and Sri Lanka.

According to Dacic, it is possible to increase the number of scholarships for the education of students in our country, but it is also necessary to find modalities for cooperation in the fields of tourism, pharmaceutical industry, medicine and military industry.

Politically speaking, these were very successful visits, he said, and estimated that Serbia has not been using its positive heritage of the past sufficiently and it has left to the other party to work with our friends, because we were not in regular communication and we did not inform them about what was happening.

Dacic said that the plan is to talk with all friendly countries not to change the attitude towards territorial integrity of Serbia, adding that Serbia will continue to work with the countries that are expected to withdraw their recognition of Kosovo’s independence too.