Serbia not striving to join NATO, National Assembly speaker says in Moscow

Serbia neither wants, nor intends to enter NATO, considering Belgrade’s problematic history with this military bloc, President of the National Assembly of Serbia Maja Gojkovic said in a speech in Russia’s State Duma on Tuesday. “Amid the difficult geopolitical conditions of instability, Serbia’s parliament made the decision on military neutrality. As a nation, we want to protect our airspace and our country,” Gojkovic said in Moscow. “Serbia has neither the aspiration nor the intention of joining NATO… Still, Serbia remains open to cooperation, and the policy of military neutrality makes it possible to actively work together with all our partners in the region and beyond,” she said. According to a poll conducted earlier, 62 percent of Serbian citizens have not forgiven NATO for its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, and 84 percent, as before, are against Serbia’s accession to NATO, TASS said.