Davutoglu: Vucic's visit to Sarajevo - visionary step

BELGRADE - Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s decision to go on his first official visit to Sarajevo had been a visionary step, announcing that a trilateral process between Serbia, Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) would be resumed soon.

“This was an excellent visionary step and I express our gratitude as well as our appreciation and admiration for this step, his visit to Sarajevo. I congratulate him because of this very visionary approach and very successful diplomatic initiative.

"If there is no stability in Sarajevo, there cannot be stability in Belgrade or in Istanbul, and vice-versa," Davutoglu said in an interview with Tanjug.

He said that Ankara saw its relationship with Serbia as a strategic partnership, and one of the purposes of his visit had been to express solidarity between the Turkish and Serbian governments and nations regarding the catastrophic flooding that had hit Serbia in the second half of May.

“In 2009, when I became (foreign) minister, Belgrade was one of the first capitals I visited in the first month of my term. Also, whenever there was a new government in Belgrade, I always wanted to be one of the first ministers to visit Belgrade to go through the files of our common interest,” the Turkish foreign minister said.

Davutoglu said that he had had “very fruitful consultations” with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and Internal Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajic, who also served as joint Turkish-Serbian economic committee chairman.

When it...