SARAJEVO – The Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and Minister of Internal Affairs Ivica Dačić stated after participating in the EU – Western Balkans Ministerial Forum on Justice and Internal Affairs held in Sarajevo that a Joint Action Plan for the fight against terrorism and violent extremism in the Western Balkans has been adopted and signed. “In Sarajevo, the traditional meeting of the European Union and partners from the Western Balkans in the field of internal affairs and justice is taking place these days. Today there was a meeting of the interior ministers. I took this opportunity to have a bilateral conversation with the Commissioner for Internal Affairs Bruner, who replaced the previous commissioner with whom we had excellent relations, and this was our first meeting,” Dačić said, as stated in the announcement.
Dačić added that he invited Bruner for a visit. “I explained to him what our tasks are as the Ministry of Internal Affairs related to our reform agenda, for all the laws, strategies, and action plans we are adopting, and of course our common issues on which we need to have good cooperation with various agencies that were also present here, such as Europol, Frontex, the Drug Enforcement Agency, for asylum, and so on,” Dačić said. The minister added that he then met with the director of Frontex, Hans Leijtens. “My second meeting was with the director of Frontex, which is very important because I think we have an arrangement where they help in border protection when it comes to illegal migrations, and this was in a way an introduction to this conference, which had several parts. The first part was related to online dangers associated with terrorism, extremism, and organized crime,” he noted. The second topic, Dačić added, was the fight against irregular migrations. “For integrated border management, for better border management, and thus in that discussion in which we participated, everyone expressed their opinion. The Joint Action Plan for the fight against terrorism and violent extremism in the Western Balkans has also been adopted and signed,” Dačić stated. Minister Dačić emphasized that the agreement from more than 10 years ago regarding regional representation has been fully respected. “This means that it is status-neutral, that there is no mention of the Republic of Kosovo, that it is about the principle of equality, which means with the name and surname of the person, and not with any names that would prejudge the resolution of the status. And that we do not cooperate operationally with Kosovo in that regard by exchanging certain operational data, biometric data, because that would mean recognizing their independence. It is very important to say this so that someone does not interpret it, since we participate in these joint gatherings, so that it is not interpreted as them being an equal participant. They are one of the partners, but without a resolved status of statehood, even though they protested a lot about what I said,” Dačić added. He emphasized that he had to react because, as he says, (Dželjalj) Svečlja immediately started with insults against the current leadership of the state. “I just conveyed to him that since the topic here is the fight against terrorism, he is indeed an expert in that field since he was a member of the terrorist organization Kosovo Liberation Army. So in any case, the chairperson agreed with me and called on everyone that the principles on which we operate are status neutrality, meaning that Kosovo is marked and represented here in a way that is allowed, meaning Kosovo with an asterisk, or without mentioning any attributes of statehood,” Dačić said.
Minister Dačić emphasized that Serbia has once again received praise for its policy regarding the fight against illegal migrations and announced that a meeting of the global alliance for the fight against irregular migrations will be held in December. (October 30)
