Nikola Selakovic, Serbian Foreign Minister, this Monday in Madrid Samuel Sánchez
Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic (38 years old, Uzice) has been lucky. He has been in office for only six months and already lands in Madrid with an important diplomatic goal: the success of the Serbian vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. It is one of the five countries in the world that has given the most doses thanks to administering both Western and EU-approved Pfizer and AstraZeneca as well as Russia's Sputnik V and Chinese Sinopharm, delivers vaccines to neighboring countries and encourages anyone to travel there to get inoculated for free. A goal in terms of public relations for a country whose image is still marked in the collective imagination by its role in the wars of disintegration of Yugoslavia and that usually generates headlines for issues such as Kosovo, the proximity to Moscow and Beijing or the accusations of erosion of their democracy.
Throughout an interview with this newspaper, held this Monday in Madrid, Selakovic insistently repeats two formulas: "peace and stability" and "small and poor country."
The first, to underline that this is Belgrade's contribution to the region today: “The role of [Serbian, Aleksandar] Vucic's president is one of the most politically important for peace and stability in Southeast Europe and the Balkans. ", He says.
The second, to explain why his country - which is negotiating a membership in the EU that seems distant - was "forced" to resort to vaccines from strategic rivals of the Union.
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Militant since 2008 in the president's party after doing so in which he led the ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj (convicted three years ago of war crimes), Selakovic maintains the leisurely tone of triple winner of the oratory competition of the University Law School from Belgrade, where he graduated. Even when Serbian leaders accused of genocide while holding the Justice portfolio (2012-2016) are asked about their visits to the prison in The Hague, about the thornier past or about the dialogue with the new Kosovar government. This Tuesday he met, among others, with his Spanish counterpart, Arancha González Laya, and with the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet. Spain, one of the only five EU countries that does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state, is, he says,"One of the most important pillars" of Serbian foreign policy.
Selakovic addresses the three issues that mark the agenda these days. The first is the proposal, last Monday, of the European Commission to allow entry to tourists from countries with less than 100 infections per 100,000 inhabitants or immunized with a vaccine authorized by the European Medicines Agency or the World Health Organization , among which are not Sputnik V or Sinopharm, with which tens of thousands of Serbs have been immunized. “It's going to be a good way to attract people from the countries of origin [of the vaccines]. Chinese and Russians will not be allowed access to the EU, but they will be allowed to Serbia ”, says the minister before recalling the recent agreements with Hungary and Greece to accept Serbian tourists immunized against COVID with any drug.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Serbian president called European solidarity a "fairy tale" while calling China a "true friend in times of need" and kissing its flag, which did not sit well in Brussels.
“The real problem”, responds the minister, “is that Serbia received the first delivery of vaccines [from the EU] in April 2021 ... And there were about 57,000 doses [the first million from the Chinese arrived in January].
So we were faced with a choice: Are we just going to listen to some political speeches?
Or are we going to try to find the best way to protect the health of our citizens?
Anonymous papers
The second issue in vogue is the anonymous papers on the Balkans that have recently circulated in Brussels without anyone acknowledging their authorship. The most controversial proposes reconfiguring the borders established after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, so that Serbia would merge with the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity, and Kosovo - which declared in 2008 an independence from Serbia that they recognize about half of the 193 UN countries - with Albania. In response to the document, the Serbian president stressed his respect for Bosnia's territorial integrity, but his Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin advocated that all ethnic Serbs, present in several countries in the area, live in a single state. Selakovic makes Belgrade's position clear:“Serbia respects and supports the territorial integrity of Bosnia Herzegovina […] And if we talk about respect for the borders of the countries of the region, it also means respect for the borders of Serbia, which means that Kosovo and Metohija are our southern provinces. . You cannot say 'this is a rule that applies to all cases, except Serbian'
The third issue is precisely Kosovo. Last week, the most Balkan in time in Brussels due to the visits of the leaders of Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo, came the prospect of a restart in June of the talks between Belgrade and Pristina, in which the EU mediates. Selakovic emphasizes that dialogue is "a priority" for Serbia - "It is not good for us to have a frozen conflict because at some point someone will come to power and unfreeze it," he warns - and applauds that the rejection of Spain, Greece, Romania , Slovakia and Cyprus to Kosovo independence guarantee a “neutral approach by Brussels” when negotiating an agreement that, in no case, would imply the Serbian recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. "When you ask me about mutual recognition,What is the compromise agreement there? I asked a colleague what Belgrade would receive [in that case]. He told me: 'you would be recognized by Pristina'. I replied: Are you kidding me? We don't need that kind of recognition. We are a recognized state and a full member of the UN. A compromise agreement does not mean that one party wins everything and the other loses everything, "he says.
Democratic involution
Serbia has been in the fire of some experts and NGOs for years, who denounce a democratic involution under the command of Vucic, formerly prime minister.
Serbia's democratic status has been downgraded to a "hybrid regime" by the US NGO Freedom House, and the country has dropped 39 places (to 93) since 2014 in Reporters Without Borders' press freedom index.
The minister defends that freedoms are not being eroded, but that they have advanced: "[democratic] conditions are much better than when we were in the opposition," in 2008, when some of the parties that boycotted the last elections led the country .
Another thorny issue is Serbia's discomfort in dealing with its most recent past. When he held the Justice portfolio, Selakovic visited Bosnian Serb leaders such as Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, then indicted and later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, in prison in The Hague. “It was my obligation, as Minister of Justice, to attend to the circumstances in which Serbian citizens are in an incarceration unit awaiting trial. They were their human rights ”, he defends. He also insists that President Vucic - who in 2018 defined Slobodan Milosevic as "a great Serbian leader whose intentions were good, but his results were very poor" - tries to provide "a good and reasonable approach" when speaking of historical figures such as Milosevic."He is always mentioning some of his mistakes, bad decisions [...] It was a terrible period for our modern history," he concludes.
