At its sitting held on 10 March 2006, the Committee on Relations with Serbs Living Outside Serbia discussed and endorsed the Activity Report of the Ministry of the Diaspora for the period June – December 2005, and the Ministry’s Activity Plan for the first half of 2006.

The Report and Plan were presented by the Minister of the Diaspora in the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Vojislav Vukcevic. Presenting the Amnesty Bill, initiated and drafted by the Ministry of the Diaspora, Mr Vukcevic said that the Bill would not enable anyone to evade military service, but would rather only stipulate the discontinuation of all criminal proceedings opened due to evasion of military service.

The Ministry had also proposed amendments to the Army Act to enable men eligible for military service living abroad to ‘serve their debt to the motherland’, as Mr Vukcevic put it, and not to renounce their Serbian nationality. In addition, the Ministry has drafted a proposal of a Bill on Serbian Nationals and Ethnic Serbs Residing Abroad and formed a Commission for the Exercise and Protection of Property Rights over Immovable Property Owned by the Republic of Serbia Abroad.

An initiative was also launched to conduct a census of Serbian nationals and ethnic Serbs residing outside Serbia in order to fully ascertain their numbers. In co-operation with the Committee, the Ministry also formed a Diaspora Co-ordination Team to leverage Serbian expatriate influence in protecting interests of the Republic of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohia.

State Secretary Aleksandar Cotric reiterated that the Ministry had asked the Government for 30 million dinars to fund the Team’s activities on 15 January 2006. As there has been no reply, the Committee resolved to request funding again.

The Committee also resolved to send a three-member delegation, made up of Dragoljub Kojcic, Zeljko Tomic and Hranislav Peric, to discuss funding for the Kosovo and Metohia Team with the Chairman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.