NATO Secretary General to visit Serbia

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - The NATO Secretary-General will pay a visit to Serbia between Oct. 6-8.

Jens Stoltenberg will visit Serbia for a series of meetings and a NATO exercise, the bloc said in a statement on Wednesday.

As part of his visit, Stoltenberg will meet Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic.

NATO chief will also join Vucic for the opening ceremony of the civil emergency exercise “SRBIJA 2018”, co-organized by the bloc’s Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) and the Serbian Interior Ministry on Oct. 8.

Stoltenberg will also give a speech at a conference organized by the Belgrade Security Forum the same day.

On Tuesday, Stoltenberg said that the exercise would be the biggest one -- with 40 countries participating -- and Serbia would host it for the first time.

He is also scheduled to meet with students at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Stoltenberg will also visit Zagreb and Ljubljana during his visit.

While other ex-Yugoslav states Croatia and Slovenia have joined the EU and NATO, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia remain in limbo.

Following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, Vucic said that Serbia does not want to be part of the NATO but wants to stay militarily neutral.