Cooperation and relations between BIH and Serbia are getting better at the bilateral level and when it comes to joint participation in regional initiatives and conferences, and also at the multilateral level, announced the outgoing Ambassador of Serbia to BiH Ninoslav Stojadinović.
According to him, this is something that promises to be applicable in the near future, since at the end of the war relations were at the lowest level for a long time, and now relations are the way they should be between two neighboring countries.
He recalled how his mandate began with handing credentials from the Chairman of the BiH Presidency Nebojša Radmanović, and soon after that the President of Serbia Boris Tadić visited BiH.
“In a way, that was the great start to a rise in relations between the two countries, which continued to develop at different levels. After the election in Serbia in 2012, the trend luckily continued. We had many more exchange visits at the level of government, such as several visits of Ministers’’, said Stojadinović.
According to him, the only thing missing is the exchange of visits at the presidential level, i.e. the President of Serbia and the BiH Presidency.
He recalled that the President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić sent an official invitation to the BiH Presidency members to visit Belgrade in April.
“They will probably also meet in May in Ankara or Istanbul at a trilateral meeting with Turkey, but before that we have this initiative to meet in Belgrade”, said Stojadinović.
He noted that the BiH Minister of Foreign Affairs Zlatko Lagumdžija would make a return visit to Belgrade on 12 April, where he will meet with the President and Prime Minister and his colleague, the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Ambassador Stojadinović noted that between BiH and Serbia there are selected open issues, which are standard between nearly all neighboring countries in the former Yugoslavia and have caused its collapse, and then with the emergence of new countries on this territory.
As a priority he pointed to the issue of the borders between the two countries. Even though he assessed that there are not many problems surrounding this, it is necessary to solve some things.
“The next thing is succession-assets of Serbian companies and state property of Serbia and BiH, and vice versa. They are working on that’’, said Ambassador Stojadinović.
According to him, BiH and Serbi are further along when it comes to succession that is based on diplomatic-consular missions.
“It is running its course and will finish relatively fast. There are currently negotiations about the Embassy of Serbia in Ankara, which by succession belonged to BiH. They are seeking some way for Serbia to retain that Embassy, because it is historically very important’’, said Stojadinović.
In turn, he added that Serbia gave BiH the building of the embassy in Belgrade.
“There is also the issue of missing persons and refugees. There are still many problems that have to be solved, but it is all in the process. Cooperation of the two countries encourages and promises that these issues in the next period would be solved faster and probably during this mandate of the BiH Presidency, until the next elections in 2014 nearly 90 percent of the open issues will be resolved’’, said Ambassador Stojadinović.
The Ambassador of Serbia to BiH Ninoslav Stojadinović took office in June 2011.
