President Aleksandar Vucic: "I don't know if Americans will accept proposal"

Photo: Tanjug/Rade Prelic

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said today in Copenhagen that reports that the Russian side proposed that NIS (Petroleum Industry of Serbia) would start buying a part of crude oil from the US are true.

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The reason would be to allow NIS to continue operations and avoid full implementation of US sanctions against the company.

But Vucic said that he is not sure that the US will accept the proposal.

Asked by journalists if information published by the press is correct - that the Russian side allegedly proposed that part of NIS be in fact given to the US side, that is, that part of the shares would be sold to Americans, and that NIS would start buying some of the crude oil from the US, via the Janaf pipeline and as a compromise solution, Vucic replied:

"It is (correct), but the question is whether the Americans will accept it. Someone has to tell us if the Americans will accept it, I'm not sure about that, but we hope they will."

The president added that he does not think that the Americans are after financial interests here.

"I think this is a bigger game. But I'd like to be proven wrong. I wish the Russians had found a magic formula to solve that problem. And do I believe in it and am I sure? Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm good at sniffing out difficult situations. (Otherwise) I would have never told people about the difficult situation, we would have found some solution. I am afraid that things will be much more difficult than that," said Vucic.

Vucic, who is in Copenhagen for the summit of the European political community, previously said that European leaders he spoke with were all focused on Ukraine.

"We will have many problems starting October 8, 9, and we have to see how to solve our problems," said Vucic.

(Telegraf Biznis/Tanjug)