Three new ambassadors of Serbia have been appointed by the Decree of President Tomislav Nikolic this August. Mr. Zoran Popovic was appointed as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to head the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Serbia to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg; Mr. Branko Brankovic was appointed as the new Ambassador in Bucharest and Mr. Pero Jankovic will represent Serbia in the capital of Austria, Vienna.

The newly appointed ambassadors of Serbia are neither new generation nor new-breed diplomats. They have been recalled from "untroubled waters", to use the jargon for diplomats at the disposal or the retired ones, in order to make their contribution to the progress of Serbian diplomacy in these hard times.

That was the reason for making this interview in Politika with Foreign Minister Ivan Mrkic.

In the diplomatic quarters, there are people who have fulfilled the requirements for retirement or those who have been recalled from retirement to be appointed to ambassadorial positions......like the new Ambassador in Bucharest, for example.

Ambassador Branko Brankovic is 72 years old... It is quite obvious why I have sent the old guard to these assignments – because I had no one else available. That is the only reason.

Does that mean that we have no young or professionally experienced candidates to meet the requirements?

I must point out that there has been no rejuvenation of staff over a number of years. No such option was available in the budget a long time before us.... So, we have come to the situation where we have to develop both the system and the staff. Provisions of the new law will be helpful in this respect. Once the new law goes through Parliament, we will have a base to rely on that will make it possible for us to hire a certain number of new staff to receive diplomatic training. In this way, we will create new respectable elite which will have a good command of languages and meet the requirements of present-day diplomacy.

Is there a diplomatic academy which can be described as an effective school for future diplomats?

We have an academy inside the Ministry which used to be referred to as "school" back in 1978, when I received my training in the Foreign Ministry. If the Law were to be adopted, the academy would begin to operate as early as October 2013. Unfortunately, the new staff will be able to receive training not before the next year, due to the fact that we lack finances at the moment. However, once the money has been made available to us, we will train a certain number of new diplomats each year so that, in twenty years' time, we will have first rate diplomats.

Your detractors, primarily those from the opposition, cite the example of appointment of the new Ambassador to France Rajko Ristic. He waited for his agrement for more than 150 days instead of the normal 60 or 90 days at the most!?

Indeed, this agrement was out of the normal practice. Nevertheless, there were examples that ambassadors waited for up to two years for their agrement. It happens in the relations between states that the so-called unwritten rules regarding agrement are not respected. On the other hand, there is no regulation that could be crucial in deciding on such cases. Logically, if the Government proposes its diplomatic representative, it must stand behind him/her. If the other side fails to respond, there is no instrument to clarify any misunderstanding in direct contacts.

Let us go back to new ambassadorial appointees. Some of them have been appointed despite the fact that they are not diplomats!?

Frankly speaking, the situation in the Ministry is such that not much attention has been paid to the training of new diplomats. Nonetheless, the only person outside the diplomatic service whom I proposed for this highest position was Slavenko Terzic, former Director of the Institute for Byzantine Studies of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. I proposed his as Ambassador to Moscow, since I had no one else in the Ministry who could have taken up the duties of Ambassador to Russia.

On the other hand, Terzic met my criterion that experts, primarily those who do not belong to political parties, be assigned as diplomatic representatives. This practice should be formalized in the future as a law or ministerial clause; although, unlike the past times, there is no need for that at the moment....I recall that as Minister, I was under no political pressure at any moment to appoint anyone in particular to a high diplomatic position. The high point in the reorganization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will definitely be the adoption of all accompanying measures that will contribute to improved working conditions. Health insurance for our people assigned to our diplomatic missions will be provided as well....

Our diplomats serving abroad are not provided health insurance!?

The situation is like I just said.... If a person serving abroad gets a toothache and has to see a dentist, he will have to pay for it himself.... I know it is hard to believe that the situation is as bad as that, but this is the truth, pure and simple. I am not aware of how many countries of the world face such a bad situation, but I believe that there are very few of them among the 190 or so members of the United Nations.

Since when has the situation been that bad?

I can't say for certain, but I will not be mistaken if I say that this was the practice in the past ten or twenty years.

When can we expect new diplomats to come out of the renewed diplomatic academy that you mentioned?

If it took years or decades to erode an institution like the Foreign Ministry or to destroy its structures, you cannot expect positive results in the short term. This process must first be legally assured and then translated into practice.

Nevertheless, positive result will follow in two or three years.

To give you an example, there is talk of the presence of a 32-year-old Counselor at the London Embassy whose previous qualifications are a two-year work experience at a bank.

This young man is doing a fine job there. Besides, we require competence in the field of economic relations. The time of political diplomacy belongs to the past. Among other things, it belongs to the past because Serbia is too small a country to be engaged to a significant extent, in the resolution of major international problems.

It is not uncommon in foreign diplomatic practice to engage counselors from the receiving country, whose ancestors were from the sending country. What are the relations between Serbian diplomacy and Serbian diaspora?

For the time being, we have more than one hundred so-called contract associates of Serbian extraction who are resident in the receiving country. Unfortunately, we lack finances to employ more of them.

They say that your decisions have been greatly influenced by the trade union of "old guard" ambassadors?

I am pleased that there is a trade union.... That body has always served as a corrective. However, from the very beginning, I held it against the trade union, and they all know it, that it has not covered all employees of the diplomatic service, but only chosen ones....In all its actions, the trade union demanded that the service be professionalized......... When I say this, I remember how they "approved" of the 2001 events when I and 263 other employees were sacked. That same year, 80 new diplomats were employed without any previous preparation, with the explanation that the Ministry was understaffed and the trade union failed to react.