FM: This isn't about visas - something else irks them

Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic on Tuesday denied the EU would reinstate visas for Serbian citizens because of Serbia's visa policy toward third countries.

Dacic was reacting to reports in the Croatian press, which said that "Serbia's visa liberalization is jeopardized because it was abolishing visas for third countries, in that way making EU's fight against illegal migration more difficult."

According to Croatia's Jutarnji List daily, this is especially true of Iranian citizens, "who arrive in Serbia as tourists and then move via Bosnia-Herzegovina toward EU countries."

An EU diplomat allegedly told the newspaper that Belgrade could soon also abolish visas for some other countries, too, "and in that way become the gateway on their road toward the EU."

But Dacic told Prva TV on Tuesday that this amounted to "disinformation."

"Some EU countries object to us canceling visas for our friendly countries. The data used as an argument is not based on statistics, that is, of the number of migrants increasing because we abolished visas for individual countries. Well it's a very small number of countries. Germany, for example, annually issues about 50,000 visas to Iranians," Dacic said.

"What bothers them is that these countries are withdrawing their recognitions of Kosovo, that's what bothers them, not the abolition of visas - because they link it that way," the head of Serbian diplomacy said.

However, Dacic noted that his country will monitor the overall situation and if the number of migrants from the said countries increases, Serbia will "sanction" them.