31.05.2018.

There is no Kosovo Army for Romania

Minister of Defence of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin, is on an official visit to Romania at the invitation of his counterpart Mihai-Viorel Fifor. Minister Vulin was welcomed in Bucharest with the highest military honours.

After a friendly meeting, Ministers Vulin and Fifor announced further development and improvement of the already successful military cooperation of the two countries and emphasised that Serbia and Romania are guarantors of peace and stability throughout the Balkans.

Minister Vulin thanked his Romanian counterpart for his enormous personal effort and great friendship shown towards Serbia at every opportunity.

“Today we have talked about how our ministries and armies should and can cooperate. We also discussed the continuation of our military-economic cooperation, cooperation that can and should be significantly better, and that is why we will exchange delegations of our experts, who will see what we can produce together, and what we can buy from each other”, Minister Vulin said.

He stressed that Romania supports the policy of military neutrality led by Serbia and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Aleksandar Vučić. He particularly thanked Minister Fifor for his profound understanding of our position on Kosovo and Metohija.

“Romania has a principled position of refusing to recognise the so-called independence of Kosovo and Metohija and supports our policy of absolutely refusing to accept the formation of the Kosovo Army. The Minister, as our friend, understands very well that any army in Kosovo and Metohija, other than KFOR, cannot and must not exist”, Minister Vulin said.

Minister of National Defence Fifor pointed out that Serbia is Romania's best and traditional friend, not only in the field of military cooperation, but also in the areas of economic and regional cooperation. Fifor said that Romania will continue to support Serbia on its path to the European Union, pointing out that it is important for the EU that Serbia becomes its member as soon as possible.

We talked about our bilateral cooperation, which has already been very successful, as well as continuing the training of members of our armed forces and cooperation, especially in the fields of military education and military medicine, in which Serbia has huge experience. We decided to continue to develop our cooperation also in the field of the defence industry, and to exchange experts who will decide on which projects we can work together, as soon as possible”, Romanian Minister of National Defence said.

“In Romania, Serbia will have a friend and we will continue to advocate and support the interests of politics not only at the level of the Ministry of Defence, but also at the level of the Government”, Minister Fifor said, concluding that there is very good cooperation between the two defence ministries, and that he hoped that in the following period, the Romanian Parliament will ratify the defence cooperation agreement, signed in Belgrade in December.