Igor Ivanov Will Conduct Negotiations with Montenegro Goran Svilanovic

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov will conduct negotiations with his counterpart from Serbia and Montenegro Goran Svilanovic.

As the RIA Novosti correspondent was told by official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Yakovenko, Igor Ivanov and Goran Svilanovic "intend to discuss the urgent international and regional problems, the inner political situation in Serbia and Montenegro and the state of affairs in the Kosovo settlement." Special attention will be paid to the state and the prospects of the development of bilateral cooperation between Russia and Serbia and Montenegro," said Yakovenko.

"Our cooperation with Serbia and Montenegro," continued Yakovenko, "does not pursue political advantages, it rests on mutual interests and mutual benefits." The information, issued in Belgrade by the Foreign Ministry of Serbia and Montenegro, expressed the hope that the second visit this year by Goran Svilanovic to Moscow would give an impulse to the development of traditionally friendly relations of Serbia and Montenegro with the Russian Federation, "which is a very important foreign-policy and trade partner." Belgrade believes that one of the themes of the discussion by Igor Ivanov and Goran Svilanovic will be the present-day situation in Kosovo and the ways of solving the Kosovo problem in the light of the planned withdrawal from there of the Russian peacekeepers.

As is pointed out in Belgrade, quite possible that at the meeting in the Russian capital the question will be raised about the family of the former President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic. According to the unofficial data, the son of the Yugoslav ex-President Mirko lives in Moscow, and in February, this year, the wife of Milosevic, Mira Markovic, also arrived in the Russian capital.