At the sitting held on 4 November, the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee completed an interview with the newly-appointed Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to the Republic of Austria Milovan Bozinovic and the newly-appointed Ambassador – standing representative of the Republic of Serbia to the United Nations European Office and other international organisations in Geneva Ugljesa Zvekic, before departure for diplomatic duty.

The newly-appointed Ambassadors to Vienna and Geneva presented the basic guidelines of their future activity. Bozinovic said that Austria is one of Serbia’s most important partners in Europe and one of the biggest foreign investors in Serbia, adding that the country enjoys considerable commercial exchange with the Austria. The Committee Chairman agreed that Austria was very important for Serbia, deeming that the country still acted like a neighbouring state even though that has not been the case since the breakdown of SFRY.

Presenting his plan, Zvekic stressed that all the activities of the Serbian Mission in Geneva are directed at and adjusted to the strategic goal of Serbia gaining the status of a reliable partner towards achieving UN goals and values. According to him, New York is the UN political centre, Vienna is the security centre and Geneva is the centre of international law primarily on human rights and refugee issues. Geneva provides a very important setting for Serbia’s activity in the multilateral sphere and Serbia shall, Zvekic announced, run for the highest offices at the UN High Commissary for Refugees.

Regarding item Deputy Friendship Groups, the Committee members endorsed the initiative to create deputy friendship groups with the Netherlands and Egypt, established the composition of the deputy friendship group with Portugal and amended the composition of the deputy friendship groups with China, the United Kingdom and Iran.

At the sitting, the Committee accepted a number of initiatives for the participation of National Assembly delegations in the activities of international organisations in November and December this year. Among them are invitations to the meetings of three committees of Council of Europe PA – Legal Committee, Monitoring Committee and Standing Committee, to be held in Paris on 16 and 18 November and in Bern on 20 November. In addition, the members of the National Assembly’s standing delegations shall take part in the General Assembly session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation in Moscow from 23 to 25 November and the session of the Assembly of the Western European Union in Paris from 1 to 3 December.

They also accepted the invitation extended to the National Assembly Speaker to attend the plenary session of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Member Nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States in St. Petersburg on 3 December, as well as the invitation to send a delegation to the Conference of Speakers of Parliaments of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) in Turkey in the spring of 2010.

The Committee accepted two initiatives – to hold the 35^th General Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation in Belgrade in June 2010 and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Belgrade in July 2010. They also accepted the initiative for a visit of the Foreign Affairs Committee to Egypt from 7 to 10 December this year. The Committee also adopted several reports on meetings between Serbian and foreign parliamentarians.

The sitting was chaired by the Committee Chairman, Prof. Dr Dragoljub Micunovic.