Today, Minister of Justice Nela Kuburović received the Australian Ambassador to Serbia, Ruth Stewart, with whom she discussed the advancement of Serbia-Australia cooperation. Minister Kuburović and Ambassador Stewart concurred that Serbia and Australia had good relations and that international legal cooperation was going well, especially considering the differences between the two counties’ legal systems.
The Australian Ambassador commended the cooperation of Serbia and its justice sector institutions in apprehending and prosecuting three Australian citizens for drug possession and sale, whose extradition Australia had requested. She said that her country had given notice to the Serbian Government’s commitment to joining the EU, including how important it deemed regional peace and stability and its own prosperity.
Minister Kuburović and Ambassador Stewart said that further advancement of international legal cooperation in a form of bilateral agreements was required, bearing in mind that the bases of the existing cooperation were international conventions. They added that establishing international legal cooperation on a bilateral basis would allow for a direct cooperation between the two countries’ judicial organs (e.g. the prosecution offices), which would accelerate the exchange of information and the respective procedures and proceedings.