Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu on Thursday had a meeting with his Serbian counterpart Nikola Selakovic, on the sidelines of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council meeting in Stockholm, on which occasion they agreed to organise a visit to Romania of the Serbian minister in the beginning of next year, agerpres reports.
According to the release, the two ministers agreed to intensify economic cooperation and diversify bilateral collaboration, by identifying new opportunities to encourage transborder cooperation and investments.
"Minister Bogdan Aurescu also approached the situation of persons belonging to the Romanian minority in the Republic of Serbia, and underscored the need to observe the rights of persons belonging to the Romanian national minority on the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia, pleading for the resumption, at the shortest, of the works of the Romanian - Serbian inter-governmental joint committee for national minorities. Thus, the two ministers agreed to resume the works of the committee in the beginning of next year, before the visit of Minister Selakovic to Bucharest. Minister Aurescu condemned as inadmissible the recent use in the public space of the hate speech on the criterion of belonging to the Romanian community in Serbia against a Serbian politician of Romanian origin, appreciated the stances of condemning this behaviour by the Serbian state officials, including by the head of state, and demanded the conduct of relevant investigations, including proper sanction enforcement," MAE also says.
The discussions also aimed at the stage of Serbia's European path.