What is IPAP and what does it represent for Serbia?

Marko Mečanin, europeanwesternbalkans.com (Original article contains links.)

Image from article, with caption: Visit to NATO by the President of the Republic of Serbia

Excerpt:

Formally speaking, the Serbia-NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan has been organised into four chapters – The political and security framework, Defence and military issues, Protection of classified information and Public diplomacy. ...

The fourth chapter covers several important topics and is called public diplomacy, scientific cooperation, and emergency management. ...

When it comes to public diplomacy, the impression is that there is far more room for improvement in this plan. This was also pointed out by Acting Assistant of Foreign Minister for Security Policy, Ambassador Branimir Filipović, who characterised it in an interview for the European Western Balkans as a problem area.

“The area of public diplomacy is identified as ‘the weakest link’, with the assessment that additional engagement by both NATO and our side is needed in order to better inform the public about the scope of mutual cooperation,” he said.

He also announced certain changes when it comes to the upcoming revision of IPAP.

“We have prepared a draft of the Strategic Guidelines for informing the public about the process of cooperation between Serbia and NATO through the Partnership for Peace programme, which will soon be submitted for adoption to the Government of Serbia,” said Ambassador Filipović.

He explained the need to inform the public objectively and timely about the benefits of such cooperation with the aim of adequately presenting state activities.

On the other hand, military analyst Aleksandar Radić does not have such an impression, as the annual evaluation of the IPAP agreement is not open to the public.

“The attitude of the current authorities is to treat as confidential the content of documents and activities which in the practice of our region are considered to be a public issue and on which the expert public and journalists are being informed,” he said.

Therefore, the situation is complicated by the fact that the annual IPAP evaluation is not publicly disclosed. If the contrary were to happen, the interested public could have a clear insight into the extent to which the scope of Serbia and NATO cooperation is comprehensive.

In this way, an easier access to facts about the level of cooperation and the subsequent benefits for Serbia would contest the titles in tabloids such as “NATO preparing the invasion of Serbia” more easily, but also open the possibility for the entire society to overcome emotional elements in the consideration of the security position of our country.