Difficult times call for best people, says Security Information Agency chief

BELGRADE - The 23rd anniversary of Serbia's Security Information Agency (BIA) and 126 years since the establishment of its predecessor, the Department for Confidential Police Affairs, were ceremonially marked on Friday.

BIA Director Vladimir Orlic and Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic, in the capacity as a presidential envoy, paid a tribute to fallen BIA operatives by laying a wreath at a memorial wall.

The ceremony was also attended by government ministers Adrijana Mesarovic and Bratislav Gasic, the head of the government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Petar Petkovic, Serbian Progressive Party leader Milos Vucevic, Defence Ministry and Serbian Armed Forces officials, representatives of prosecutor's offices and the judiciary, Telekom Serbia CEO Vladimir Lucic and others.

"In the past 12 months, the planet has not become a more peaceful place or one where there is more understanding - the opposite has happened," Orlic said.

"The same is the case with our immediate neighbourhood but Serbia, too, has faced the most complex challenges," he said.

"Altogether, that means that the pressure in those 12 months was bigger and heavier than it was a year ago. It equally means that the tasks and expectations faced by the BIA are only greater," Orlic said.

Difficult times call for the best people, he noted.

"That is the most important message. In the toughest of times, we have to be the best," Orlic said.

The BIA will not shrug its shoulders at scenes such as meetings between officials of Croatia and Pristina's PM Albin Kurti, but act, Orlic said, adding that the agency had taken several trump cards out of the hands of participants of such a meeting last year.

"But we must never be satisfied - for every foreign spy we uncover and incapacitate, we must look for space to find another one, for every terrorist we successfully neutralise, we must create space to neutralise other terrorists. We must stop anyone who dares to attack this country and destroy the constitutional order," Orlic said.