Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic on Monday signed a copperation treaty with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, at the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Jakarta.
“I signed that accession instrument today. Serbia is the 52nd country that signed it. We are talking about countries that have 600 million inhabitants, several thousand billion dollars of GDP together,“ Dacic said.
“We have about 700 million dollars in trade and goods exchange with ASEAN; we expect that this year and the next it could be more than 1 billion dollars,” he added,
Beside Serbia, the Instruments of Accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia TAC were also signed by Panama and Kuwait.
Dacic said that this would not affect Serbia’s basic foreign policy goals – EU acession, and this does not contradict what was signed in Jakarta.
“This is an accession to their contract, we are not a member state,” said Dacic.
Serbia submitted a formal request for accession to the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in Southeast Asia in 2013.
The countries that have signed the Treaty include those from all continents, such as China, India, Japan, Russia, France, the US, Canada, Turkey, EU, UK, Germany, UAE and others.
Source : BalkanInsight
