First Counsellor in the Foreign Policy Sector of the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sasa Kostic participated in the public discussion "Partnership Tour" organized at the City of Kragujevac Assembly within the project implemented by the Atlantic Council of Serbia, in cooperation with the Slovak Atlantic Commission in Serbia, with the support of the Slovak Aid and NATO Public Diplomacy Section. The project is a follow-up to the perennial work of the Atlantic Council of Serbia on dislocating debate on major security issues from the Capital and bringing this subject-matter closer to the people of other Serbian towns.

NATO is Serbia's unavoidable interlocutor and Serbia wishes to promote its political dialogue with NATO and its partner countries from the "Partnership for Peace" (PfP) programme, said the First Counsellor in Serbia's MFA Security Policy Sector Sasa Kostic. "Active and substantive utilization of the potentials available to PfP partner cooperation that is in the function of our national interests is the proper measure of developing our relations with NATO", said Kostic. He underlined that Serbia was militarily neutral and had no aspirations to join NATO, but it recognized scope for promoting cooperation with this organization in the framework of all PfP programmes. "Serbia appreciates NATO guarantees for the implementation of the Agreement on normalizing its relations with Pristina, reached in Brussels, in April 2013", Kostic said. He stated that NATO was Serbia's unavoidable interlocutor, given the challenges Serbia was faced with, NATO's role in the promotion of regional security, as well as the political and strategic priorities of Serbia's neighbours. Kostic said that Serbia would continue its on-going good cooperation with the Slovak Embassy which has, since the beginning of the year, been the point of contact for cooperation with NATO, as well as with the NATO Military Liaison Office (MLO) in Belgrade. Head of the NATO MLO in Belgrade, Brigadier General Ornelo Barron, spoke at a panel discussion on military-technical cooperation between Serbia and NATO. Peter Bator of the Permanent Delegation of Slovakia to NATO and Ivo Samson, Director of the Slovak Institute for Security and Defence Studies, spoke about Slovakia's experiences on the path to NATO membership.