Joint press point

Dobrodošli,

Good evening, it’s good to see you all and it’s good to be here and welcome to President Vučić, it is great to have you back at NATO Headquarters. And it’s great to see that our partnership and our friendship, Aleksandar, is improving as good as we have seen today.

And your visit to the NATO Headquarters demonstrates that strong partnership between NATO and Serbia. And it’s great to see that we are able to strengthen that partnership in so many different ways.

We developed our partnership with many new activities and we are strengthening the partnership in full respect of the military neutrality of Serbia. There is no contradiction between the military neutrality of Serbia and the good and strong partnership with NATO. Actually, NATO has many partners who are neutral and at the same time have a strong cooperation and partnership with the Alliance.

We just finished a very good meeting with the North Atlantic council with all the 29 Allies and we welcome the fact that we can meet together in this way because NATO and Serbia face common security challenges, and working with NATO can bring real benefits to Serbia and its citizens and the wider region. Our partnership makes Serbia safer and more secure, and it also contributes to the security of NATO Allies.

We have more than one hundred partnership activities every year. We work with Serbia on the reform of your national security forces and institutions. We train Serbian officers so they can participate better and more safely in international peacekeeping exercises. And Serbia cooperates with NATO Allies and with NATO in joint military exercises – 24 so far this year.

NATO also provides a framework for Serbia to work with its neighbours in response to natural disasters.  In September, Serbian first responders participated in NATO’s disaster management exercise in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I’m delighted that Serbia has offered to host next year’s exercise in Serbia.

Our partnership can also make differences in the fight against terrorism.

NATO Allies and partners regularly train together with Serbian professionals at the Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Centre in Kruševac.

And next month, Serbia will begin work with NATO to train Iraqi military medics.

So our partnership is growing and today, we discussed how to deepen that relationship. 

We also discussed the security challenges facing the Western Balkans. A strong, democratic and prosperous Serbia means more security and stability for the whole region.

Working together is important as Serbia advances its European agenda. I welcome your progress towards the European Union. Especially today, when NATO and the EU are working more closely together than ever before.

So President, it is really an honor to have you here at the NATO Headquarters and thank you for your personal commitment to Euro-Atlantic cooperation, which is indispensable for building security for all our citizens.

So Aleksandar, welcome to NATO, and please, you have the floor.

Moderator: We have time for some questions. Lady over there, Tanjug.

Q: Marina Maksimovic (Tanjug): Marina Maksimovic, Tanjug News Agency: For Mr. Stoltenberg, did you speak today about the creation of the Kosovo army and what is your position regarding this?

And for Mr. Vucic the question is… [Interpreter] what are the benefits that cooperation between NATO and Serbia can produce when it comes to integration [inaudible] Serbia [End of interpretation]

Jens Stoltenberg (Secretary General of NATO): When it comes to Kosovo Security Forces I have clearly stated my position many, many times, and that is that any change in the mandate for the Kosovo Security Forces has to be done in accordance with the constitution and it requires the necessary constitutional amendments, so that's the way we have approached that issue all the time because it is important that any decisions, any transformation of the Kosovo Security Forces is done in accordance to the constitution.

Aleksandar Vucic (President of the Republic of Serbia): [Interpreter] I believe I spoke really concretely about it but I'll try to say it briefly. Our officers and soldiers will be trained in a better way and they will gain new experiences. Don’t forget that we have joined programs, we take part in 10 international missions: six are under the auspices of the U.N. and four under the E.U. auspices. Those soldiers speak more languages, they have better training, they see things in the world in a better way.

Number two, we will be much better equipped for different things. Secondly, here we are supported and helped here. What are we going to do with unexploded ordinances? How we are going to train our people? This is one of the way how we would do that even better. And please don’t forget strong presence of NATO in Kosovo with our dialogue that we have been having in the past years has contributed to the fact that we can praise with that today, even [inaudible] running from that because I know what we should do, speak all the words about each other from quite an unknown reason to me, but we managed in past 4.5 years not to have any hurt, when I say hurt I mean kill. There were some injured people but we don’t have any killed Serbs or Albanians. We used to have such conflicts and we all did something and all these difficult discussions, painful discussions, gave some results, and those are the facts.

Of course, today I spoke at this important big meeting, I also spoke about many other things that are troubling Serbian people and citizens of Serbia but this is not the moment to speak about it here because it is important to speak what is our job in the future and what we can do that we could have some benefit from, and I hope that our hosts will not have any damage from it. If somebody in Serbia thinks that we do not need good relations with NATO while NATO is in Kosovo and many countries in the neighbourhood, not in all neighbouring countries but in many of them, if you don’t think that we don’t need good relations I'll say immediately please come here and run Serbia by yourselves.

I don’t understand why someone would want to jeopardize us. It's quite an unknown thing to me. I'm not hiding what I think about what happened in 1999, I've never hid it, but people we must look into the future sometimes. I'm saying to the people from NATO we are not interested in joining military alliances and they say that it's not a problem, you have chosen your path, and we say yes we did as an independent and sovereign country we have chosen our path, but we do need good cooperation with NATO.

And I'm grateful to Jens because he is working on it and nobody can convince me that Jens Stoltenberg hates Serbia. I don’t want to say any things differently from that and nobody can say that he doesn’t want good future for it. We're going to put a lot of energy, a lot of effort to help our people both in Kosovo but entire Serbia safe and secure. We have our army that we are strengthening, we want to defend and preserve that kind of military neutrality and we are going to have success on that path. On the other side, we will cooperate with NATO and try to give the best possible results in the future. I was not hiding today, they asked me about relations with Russia and everything that I say in Belgrade I said it here today. And this is the strength of Serbian politics and the honesty of Serbian politics: not to lie to anyone but to say to everybody what we really think.

Q: Yes, [inaudible], Serbian TV. Mr. Secretary General you have confirmed the respect for the military neutrality of Serbia. Have you discussed the close ties and cooperation that Serbia has with Russia? Is that something that you see as compatible with the cooperation with NATO? And in this context also, position on the Russian Humanitarian Centre in Serbia, do you have a position on that?

And to Mr. President, if I can add… [Interpreter] ~Among the ambassadors of the member states, is there a consensus whether Serbia should be intensively cooperated with regardless of its commitment for military neutrality?

Jens Stoltenberg: We have discussed both in the meeting I had with the President before we met with all the 29 allies in the North Atlantic Council. we of course also discussed military neutrality of Serbia, and there is no doubt whatsoever that we absolutely respect the decision by Serbia to remain a military neutral country because Serbia is a sovereign independent nation and I strongly and the whole alliance strongly believe in the right of every nation to choose its own path, and Serbia has decided to be a military neutral country and we absolutely respect that.

And we have to remember that NATO has many partners which are neutral. I'm from Norway and we have two neighbours, Sweden and Finland, they are neutral but they are very close friends of NATO and Norway as a NATO ally. So there is no contradiction, there is no mutual exclusion of being…, no contradiction between being a neutral country and having a close partnership, cooperation, good relationship with NATO or NATO allied countries. And I have reiterated that very clearly today.

That also means that it's for Serbia to decide how they want to cooperate with Russia, and there are military activities, there are some exercises, but there are many exercises and military activities also with NATO and NATO allies. And Aleksandar went through some very interesting numbers and figures where he described how many activities Serbia has with Russia and how many activities there are with NATO and NATO allies. And again this is for Serbia to decide. We respect what Serbia desires on these issues.

When it comes to this humanitarian centre, again, that is for Serbia to decide. We welcome that we are expanding the cooperation with NATO and that we have more than 100 different activities addressing a wide range of issues which are important for Serbia, training Serbian officers, helping with reforming defence and security institutions, addressing the challenges related to explosive devices, but also different signs for peace projects, and again this is partly NATO helping Serbia but it's also Serbia helping NATO because Serbia has now decided to help us with training of Iraqi officers or Iraqi medical medicine, which is important for our efforts to try to fight terrorism.

So, again, this is respecting an independent country making its own decisions. And let me also add that in the meeting today we had a very frank and open discussion also on some of the sensitive issues about the past, about history, what happened back in 1999. But I think that the only way to overcome that is to be honest and frank about those issues and then look to the future and strengthen our partnership because that's good for Serbia and good for NATO.

Aleksandar Vucic: [Interpreter] Once again I want to thank Secretary General Stoltenberg for all his words and I want to answer your question. Today, we've been respected by all member states and almost all of them intervened to the floor. Maybe representatives of three countries did not make any interventions but almost everybody else took the floor. They wished to ask some questions, we did not agree on everything beyond any doubt, but I want people in Serbia to know that I believe that we protected in a good and smart way the interests of our country and we represented it in a good light.

We really had respect and we were appreciated guests today here and I'm really grateful to the NATO member states. Whether they had questions about our relations with Russia? Yes, they did. Did they have any other questions regarding our friendship with China? Yes, they did. And we answered all those questions so this didn’t have much to do with military alliances but with some trade and economic ties, but I believe that we answered rationally to all that, and I believe that our relations will be stronger and we are going to strengthen them because the much respect we have among us, not only that we have better trained officers but the more trust the less risk there is for our country, and people in Serbia should understand that.

If somebody thinks that it is time for playing great heroes and facing half of the world then I don’t know who else? I believe it is important to stay on our course, that our boat is sailing towards a safe harbour, but to preserve peace and stability because this is the only way to make economic progress, visible or even more visible than it has been until today. Anyway, I'm really pleased with the hospitality and the respect that was given to Serbia today. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you very much. This concludes this press point. Good evening.