Former president: Serbia should be compensated

Former president: Serbia should be compensated

BELGRADE -- The energy agreement between Serbia and Russia was good and government representatives "should not mislead the public on that issue," said Boris Tadic.

Tadić, Serbia's former president who how heads the opposition SDS party, pointed out that in the wake of the scrapping of the South Stream project, "Serbia should seek a revision of this energy agreement in order to, through various agreements with Russia, be compensated for all that it lost."

Tadić, who in 2008, as the country's president, signed the agreement with Russia, further told a news conference on Thursday that the Russian side during the negotiations "did not allow for any clause which would protect Serbia in case the gas pipeline is not built."

Tadic said that adding such a clause was not possible because Serbia was the weaker party in the talks, and because the country's oil sector was about to collapse, so investments from a strategic partner - Gazprom - were necessary.

Asked whether he would now, if he were the head of state, sign such an agreement, Tadic said that there were more reasons in favor than against, "because it was about Serbia's energy security through the arrival of a strategic partner in NIS, which at that time nobody except Gazprom wanted."

On the other hand, without the energy agreement was signed South Stream would have bypassed Serbia, taking the shorter route through Romania and Bulgaria to Austria, Tadic said, and added that without the deal in place, Serbia would today be importing fuel, would have higher public debt and zero income from the oil mining rent.

Headded it was very important to know what exactly the government's position was in...