"Nikolić and Vučić pursue same policy" - adviser

"Nikolić and Vučić pursue same policy" - adviser

BERN -- President Tomislav Nikolić and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić "are maintaining constant communication and there are no disagreements between them."

This is what Nikolić's foreign policy adviser and former foreign minister Ivan Mrkić told the daily Danas.

"The state leadership is united and the country would not be led successfully if that was not true. There is a convergence and everyone has constitutional powers and frameworks to act within," Mrkić was quoted as saying.

Mrkić was in Bern, where he attended the opening of a conference on human rights defenders.

Previously, Mrkić visited Kiev for the inauguration of new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the report noted.

Serbia's attendance of the inauguration was noticed and well-received by the new Ukrainian authorities, while Poroshenko himself demonstrated this clearly in his messages to the Serbian president, Mrkić said, adding that Serbia will participate strongly in everything that promotes peace, stabilises the situation and defuses the crisis in Ukraine.

Asked whether his visit to Kiev has caused problems with Russia, Mrkić said that Serbia "absolutely does not hide anything that it does" and that it communicates its intentions to friends beforehand.

Commenting on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's visit to Serbia, Mrkić noted that the EU has always been aware of what kind of relations Serbia is maintaining with Belarus.

"We were hiding nothing, and our goal is to develop the best possible relations with Belarus, especially economically. This is not about any kind of changes in Serbia's policy or a change in strategic...