The editor-in-chief of the Novi Magazin, Nadezda Gace, assesses that engaging lobbyists is always an important activity, but that Ivica Dacic’s statement that they should be engaged in representing Serbia’s interests in resolving the Kosovo problem comes late and that it comes from the wrong man, reports regional broadcaster N1.
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said that Serbia should hire a lobbyist to defend the interests of Serbia in resolving the Kosovo problem.
“It’s interesting to me that Dacic is talking about lobbyists, I have nothing against lobbying, Serbia used to have lobbyists, and it was paid a lot of money.” Afterwards, for the cost of engagement was said to be much greater than the effects of lobbying,” Nadezda Gace said in N1 ”New Day”.
However, she emphasizes that Dacic should not speak about this, because he thus degrades people working in the ministry, who are engaged in diplomacy and represent the interests of Serbia in international relations.
“If someone else stands for lobbyists, I would say ok, but the foreign minister degrades people working in that ministry,” Gace said.
She praised the “great activity” of Minister Dacic, but it is not clear to her that “the rhetoric of the Kosovo issue has been intensified” lately.
“Initially, I thought that it was to strengthen Dacic within his own party, but he continues on … It is obvious that ‘things are packing’ that some kind of solution for Kosovo will be put on the table and that it will not be just an agreement on this legally binding agreement,” added Gace.
She reminded that the Albanians had their lobby for Kosovo already in the 1980s.
“And all the Albanians who then worked in Switzerland, Germany, were obliged to give three per cent of their salary for lobbying, and so they came to the money. Is that so today I do not know,” says Gace.
According to her, it is late for the engagement of a lobbyist who would now represent Serbian interests.
“In order not to turn out that I am against lobbying, it is important, but somehow I think that in this final phase of the Kosovo agreement where it is clear that this leads to a solution, certainly not a frozen conflict, to jump into another train, is not logical,” said Gace.
Speaking about whether Serbia is increasingly reliant on Russia in resolving the Kosovo issue, Nadezda Gace says that it is more “an external effect.”
“The attitude of the Novi Magazin editorial office, whenever we write about these topics, is that nobody has anything against the Russian people and Russian culture, but returning now to Russia, it’s playing on a seesaw – ‘If we do not get what we want from the EU and the international community, we will turn to Russia’… It is a more external effect than it would actually happen,” Gace said.
