Non-Aligned Summit Embarrasses Some Serbs

Dragoljub Micunovic, head of the Serbian parliament's foreign affairs committee and a top official of the ruling Democratic Party, said the decision to host the summit in September should be reviewed.

Serbia no longer needed to emphasise its former close cooperation with Third World countries as ties closened with Europe, he maintained.

President Boris Tadic started pushing the idea for Belgrade to host the anniversary summit in 2009. Tadic recalled that the Non-aligned Movement was founded at a conference in Belgrade, when it was the capital city of Yugoslavia, in 1961.  

Under its longtime leader, president Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia was a leading member of the movement that gathered more than 100 states, which refused to join the Cold War military alliances of NATO or its Soviet counterpart, the Warsaw Pact.

Today, Serbia has the status of the observer.

Political analyst Ognjen Pribicevic opined that Serbia needed to dovetail its foreign policy with that of Brussels these days, as EU membership took priority. "Serbia has to align its foreign policy with European norms," he said.

Aleksandra Joksimovic, a former assistant foreign minister, agreed that the movement had little to contribute to Serbia's quest for European integration.
 
The conference would not harm Belgrade, she said, but the question was whether Serbia needed to spend much energy on its organisation, she suggested.

Vlajko Senic, from the Democrats' junior coalition partner, G17 Plus, said they had not been consluted on the issue at all. "Let the Democrats agree among themselves on whether we want the Non-Aligned meeting in Belgrade or not," Senic said.