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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Good cooperation of Serbian Interior Ministry with US police and security services

Belgrade/New York, 2 February 2010

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic met in New York with Police Commissioner of the City of New York Raymond Kelly.

Ivica Dacic and Raymond Kelly

Dacic presented the organisational chart of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior to Kelly, emphasising that its priority was reform of the police. He added that there was a great interest in sending Serbian policemen for training to the New York City Police Department, primarily of members of special units, traffic police, crime intelligence units and the financial investigations unit.

During the talks, he underlined that to date the Serbian Ministry of the Interior has enjoyed good cooperation with the US police and security services and that this should remain a long-term cooperative partnership since both countries, Serbia and the US, faced the same problem – organised crime and terrorism.

The New York Police Commissioner presented the organisational chart of the New York Police to Dacic and said that the greatest challenges facing the US were growth of Islamic terrorism and danger from radicalisation of the situation in the Balkans.

Kelly also presented new surveillance systems - into which the US government has invested $250 million - which will cover the most risky areas of New York.

In recent years the US has been facing increasingly frequent terrorist attacks - the most brutal being the one on September 11, 2001 - when several thousands of people died in Washington and New York in a series of attacks.

Dacic said that the exchange of experiences in the fight against organised crime and corruption, drug smuggling and the fight against terrorism would be useful to both sides.

He said that the Balkans were presently a fertile ground for recruitment of extreme Islamic groups and that sharing information in this field would be necessary in order to prevent the export of white Al-Qaida to the US, which is a potential target.

On the last day of his visit to New York, Dacic held a lecture themed “European Vision of Serbia”at the Harriman Institute of the Columbia University.

Among other things, Dacic underlined that the future of the entire region must be EU membership and visa liberalisation for all citizens.

This democratic and pro-European government of Serbia was made by agreement between the Democratic Party of Serbia of Boris Tadic and the Socialist Party of Serbia of which I am the president, two parties which had great conflicts in the past - to that end, Tadic and I signed the Declaration on political reconciliation, which says that we cannot change the past, but we can influence the present and the future of Serbia, Dacic said.

According to him, it is equally important to make a historical reconciliation between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and re-establish relations with the EU and the US.

We respect legitimate interests of all peoples, but also expect that others respect legitimate interests of Serbia when it comes to the place of its birth, the Serbian Jerusalem – Kosovo and Metohija -even when we have different positions, it is important to preserve peace and stability, without conflicts, like Serbia did when it asked for the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague about the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo and Metohija, Dacic underlined.