After a last year’s Montenegrin presence at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that did not leave indelible traces in memories, marked by a poor political content and a total lack of global vision of international relations, this year, the Delegation of Montenegro — headed again, like two years ago, by the Prime Minister of Montenegro, H.E. Mr. Milo Đukanović — arrived last Sunday for the UNGA week in New York City, N.Y., with a packed schedule of meetings, lined up in co-ordination with the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Montenegro to the international organisation, H.E. Mr. Nebojša Kaluđerović, GCDO.

When the great public and most generalist medias have discovered independent Montenegro only recently with the emerging of the country as a raising world-tourist destination — the term “Montenegrin” just beginning to replacing in public minds those of “ex-Yugoslavian” or “Serbian” for qualifying the people of the tiny Balkan State, Montenegro has been however, for a decade now, a hot spot on the regional geopolitical scene for U.S. and European foreign policies in the East Adriatic. This week in New York City, the country undoubtedly reaped the harvest of several years of intensive relational work by the successive Đukanović’s Governments to positioning the country as a stable and reliable key partner in the South-East Europe, finally earning its letters of international recognition for its influential voice in the region, not only from the United States and the European Union, but also from numerous other leading countries around the world, mainly in the Arab world and Asia, where Montenegro is currently fast extending its diplomatic network.

Thus, at the same rank — in balance with the country’s limited capacities — as the largest delegations present this week in New York City, Prime Minister Đukanović and Foreign Minister Milan Roćen — seconded by Deputy Foreign Minister for Multilateral Relations Milorad Šćepanović, have held, between Sunday September 20 and Saturday September 26 in the margin of the 64th U.N. General Assembly, around fifty different meetings at various levels, bilateral and multilateral, formal and informal, among them:
• Various informal meetings with Heads of State and Government participating in the U.N. Secretary General’s Summit on Climate Change (Mr. Đukanović).
• Meeting with the Latvian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Maris Riekstins (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Lithuanian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Vygaudas Usackas (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Estonian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Urmas Paet (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Stephen Smith (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Bulgarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Dr. Rumiana Jeleva (Mr. Roćen).

• Meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, H.E. Mr. Nasser Judeh (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, H.E. Mr. James B. Steinberg at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (Mr. Đukanović).
• Meeting with the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway, H.E. Mr. Jens Stoltenberg (Mr. Đukanović).
• Brief meeting with T.Exc. U.S. President Mr. Barack Obama and First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama at the Metropolitan Museum’s reception (Mr. & Mrs. Đukanović).
• Meeting with the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Mrs. Helen Clark (Messrs. Đukanović, Roćen and Šćepanović, accompanied by Ambassador Kaluđerović).
• 2009 Treaty Event opening ceremony for the signature of the “Optional Protocol to the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, adopted on December 10, 2008 (Mr. Đukanović).

• Ministerial meeting of the U.S.-Adriatic Charter (Mr. Roćen) — attended, in addition to Foreign Minister Roćen, by the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for the Balkan region, Mr. Stuart E. Jones; the Croatian Foreign Minister, Mr. Gordan Jandroković; the Albanian Foreign Minister, Mr. Ilir R. Meta; the Macedonian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr. Zoran Petrov; and as observer, by the Serbian Assistant Foreign Minister, Mr. Vuk Žigić.

• Annual meeting of the Balkan Leaders on the theme “The Challenge of the Third Millennium: Lasting Peace and Prosperity in the Balkans”, hosted by the Federation of Balkan American Associations (FEBA) and co-sponsored by the Division for Global Affairs of the Rutgers University-Newark, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Astor Saloon (Mr. Roćen) — notably attended, in addition to Foreign Minister Roćen, by the President of Kosovo, Mr. Fatmir Sejdiu; the President of Croatia, Mr. Stjepan Mesić; the Albanian Foreign Minister, Mr. Ilir R. Meta; the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mr. Ahmet Davutoğlu; and Mr. Haris Silajdžić, Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• Informal meeting of the Foreign Ministers from ex-Yugoslavia (Mr. Roćen, accompanied by Ambassador Kaluđerović) — called upon the Serbian Ministry for Foreign Affairs to discuss Serbia’s plans to organise a special meeting in Belgrade in 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of the First Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

• Meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, H.E. Mr. Kasit Piromya (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Peter Balazs (Mr. Roćen).

• Meeting with the Albanian Prime Minister, H.E. Mr. Sali Berisha (Mr. Đukanović).
• Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the CTBT-Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (Mr. Šćepanović).
• European Union Troika meeting with Balkan States (Mr. Šćepanović).
• Meeting with the Bahraini Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa (Mr. Roćen) — including a signing ceremony of the final protocol on the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Montenegro and the Kingdom of Bahrain.
• Meeting with the Maltese Prime Minister, H.E. Dr. Lawrence Gonzi (Mr. Đukanović).
• Meeting with the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Ahmet Davutoğlu (Mr. Roćen).
• Meeting with the Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, H.E. Mr. Alberto G. Romulo (Mr. Roćen) — including a signing ceremony on the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Montenegro and the Philippines.
• Meeting with the Ecuadorean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration, H.E. Mr. Fander Falconí Benitez (Mr. Roćen) — including a signing ceremony on the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Montenegro and the Ecuador.
• Meeting with the Nicaraguan Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Samuel Santos López (Mr. Roćen) — including a signing ceremony on the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Montenegro and the Nicaragua.
• Meeting with the Cuban Minister for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Mr. Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla (Mr. Roćen).

• Meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), H.E. Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayid al-Nahyan (Mr. Roćen).

Additionally, Prime Minister Đukanović held numerous meetings within the U.N. General Assembly framework, including with the President of the 64th Session, H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, by another way Minister for African Union Affairs of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and the U.N. Secretary-General, H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-Moon.

As for him, Foreign Minister Roćen also had a series of informal meetings with his counterparts from all the Balkan region, Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Egypt, Portugal, Austria, Russia, Finland, Slovakia and Malta, as well as with a number of representatives of international organisations.
Concerning Deputy Foreign Minister Šćepanović, the UNGA week was an opportunity to make himself familiar with the internal functioning of the U.N. administrative bodies, as he has been approached to succeed Ambassador Kaluđerović, whose three-year ambassadorial mandate to the Organisation expired in August last.