Ministry of defence Republic of Serbia
 
02.06.2010.

Strengthening further relations with EU



Strengthening the relation of Serbia with EU has to undergo a stage of increasing trust in the security and defense sector, as Minister of Defense of Serbia Dragan Sutanovac stated today after his meeting with the EU parliamentarians in Brussels.

After his expose to the Subcommittee for defense and security of the European Parliament, Sutanovac said that the MEPs gave their unanimous approval and support to the last three years of reform in the defense system.

He remarked that these reforms entailed a reform of the military education, health care, peace mission deployment and strengthening of regional stability.
“It was really impressive to talks about this, and to hear the comments of EU MPs who praised us highly for everything we have done so far, as one of the priorities in Serbia’s integrations with EU”.
According to his words, the Serbian delegation presented the results achieved so far in deployment of our army in foreign peace missions to their colleagues in the European Parliament, and that Serbia would open another two missions in the next months.

Sutanovac mentioned Serbia’s interest to participate in EU peace missions, the same way the Serbian police had already expressed its interest.

We have not made any concrete steps yet, but in the months to follow we will make this our goal. I expect MoD to take part in EU peace missions, which are of extreme importance for the trust between Serbia and EU.
The session of the Subcommittee was attended by a large number of MEPs (Members of European Parliament), including the former Slovenian minister of foreign, former defense minister of Romania, and EU delegation for Serbia, Macedonia and Albania as Sutanovac said.

Jelko Kacin, delegation for relations with Serbia, after the talks of the Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac with MEPs, observed that Serbia had to show even greater ambition and that the government had many ambitious people with the power to speed up Serbia’s approximation to EU.
He stressed that it was of paramount importance for Serbia’s approximation to EU to strengthen and boost relations in the area of defense and especially in the field of intelligence services.
Once again Sutanovac took this opportunity to underline that “there is no more doubt that Serbia is not protecting ICTY fugitives and that was a significant leap forward”.
“The political decision to launch and complete cooperation with the ICTY was adopted long ago and that is a technical matter. I expect this to happen as soon as possible”, as Minister underlined.

The chairman of the Subcommittee Arnauld Danjean said that EU was pleased with seeing Serbia coming close to EU.

AS he added the matters of security and defense are delicate matters and if we make progress in these fields, it is a very good sign for further progress.

What we have heard today bespeaks of Serbia’s shift in stances and proves that its troublesome and tragic history is behind us.
The main priority of Serbia’s defense policy is obtaining EU membership, which first entails the standardization of state administration, and the SAF.
TANJUG news agency
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Ministry of defence Republic of Serbia, Bircaninova 5 street, Belgrade
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