Since the NATO attacks on Serbian police and military targets in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia, no US president has visited Serbia. While they have visited Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo, Serbian media ask the question: Why are they ignoring Serbia?
"Are there people alive in the American Administration who remember who was the last American president who visited Belgrade?", asked a few days ago the Serbian Foreign Minister, Ivica Dacic, commenting on the topic of Russian influence in Serbia.
"No one has the right to complain. They themselves are guilty", added Daçiqi.
Since 1980, when President Jimmy Carter visited the former Yugoslavia, no American president has set foot in Belgrade. Before him, Richard Nixon (1970) and Gerald Ford (1975) visited. Meanwhile, the region - but not Serbia - has been visited by: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Obama had avoided this part of Europe, writes Blic, reports Telegraph.
In Croatia there were four presidents Bill Clinton (1996) and George W. Bush (2008). In Slovenia Bush was twice. In Hungary there were George Bush - the old and the young. Clinton was twice. The young Bush and Clinton were also in Bulgaria and Romania, while in Macedonia it was only Clinton who was twice in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Clinton also visited Kosovo in 1999, while the young Bush visited Albania in 2007 and Kosovo in 2001 when he was visiting the Bondsteel base.
Milan Protić, the former ambassador of Serbia to the USA, says that the states of the region have better relations with the Americans, unlike Serbia.
"I intended to bring Bush. He promised, but then the terrorist attacks of September 11 happened," he says, adding that such a visit is not an easy task.
The other former ambassador to the USA, Ivan Vujacic, says: "Many things have changed. Until recently, two fugitives from The Hague were hiding in Serbia, and politically we are not what we were in Tito's time".
The last two Serbian officials who were received by an American president were Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjici who met in Washington with George W. Bush. /Telegraph/
