Ivica Dacic has said that 2018 was marked by the extremely dynamic diplomatic activity of Serbia, both bilaterally and multilaterally. The first deputy PM and Foreign Minister spoke on Monday during the New Year's reception at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized for members of the diplomatic corps and representatives of the media, B92 reports.

According to the Serbian Government, Dacic underlined that our country will continue to build relations and partnerships on the basis of dialogue, mutual consideration and respect for the obligations undertaken with everyone, regardless of whether our positions on certain issues with the other side coincide or not.

In the year ahead of us, our priority will be to preserve the interests of the Republic of Serbia in relation to Kosovo and Metohija, and we will not give up on our commitment to dialogue and compromise, in order to find a comprehensive, long-lasting and stable solution, Dacic pointed out.

He said that we want an agreement with Pristina, but that we will react strongly to each one-sided act that they make that has not been agreed, in order to protect our interests.

"Accession of Serbia to the EU remains our key foreign policy priority. Our goal is to secure further support from EU member states and EU institutions in the negotiation process," Dacic said.

"We are not satisfied with the opening of only four negotiating chapters during the past year. The Republic of Serbia was ready to have more chapters opened. This number of chapters opened does not reflect realistic progress in the reform processes in our country, and we are very interested that our internal efforts be valorized through the negotiation process with the European Union too, which, I hope, will be the case in 2019," Dacic concluded.