President attends naming of British residence ceremony

President attends naming of British residence ceremony

BELGRADE -- British Ambassador Denis Keefe hosted a reception on Thursday to mark the designation of the name of the British residence in Belgrade after Elsie Inglis.

The diplomat and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic revealed a memorial plate bearing the Scottish doctor's name.

Addressing the reception hosted as part of events marking the 100th anniversary World War I, and International Women's Day, Keefe underscored that Elsie Inglis was one of 600 British women who were in Serbia during the war as part of the Allied Medical Service.

Inglis was one of the first women holding a university degree in Scotland and she was also a pioneer in medicine, Keefe said and added that Inglis fiercely fought prejudice and advocated social and political emancipation of women in Britain. She was a tireless volunteer, a brave organizer of women's hospitals in Scotland and a devoted humanitarian activist, Keefe said.

He noted that Inglis did not live to see the end of the war and the triumph of some of her ideas, but she had an immense impact on social developments.

She became a doctor in Scotland "and in Serbia she was a saint," Keefe was quoted as saying by Tanjug.

In a statement, the British embassy said that Inglis "actively assisted the Serbian army in the hospitals in Kragujevac, Mladenovac, Lazarevac, Krusevac, Valjevo, Thessalonika, Corsica and Odessa." She died in November 1917 after returning to Britain from a German prison.

The reception at the British residence was attended by the Serbian president and his wife Dragica Nikolic, U.S. Ambassador in Serbia Michael Kirby, Italian Ambassador Giuseppe Manzo, Indian Ambassador Narinder Chauhan and a...