UAE partners with Serbia for military training

The agreement between the countries includes an exchange of information and technologies in the defence industry.

ABU DHABI // Emiratis will soon be able to receive top military training thanks to a new agreement with Serbia. The deal between the countries includes an exchange of information and technologies in the defence industry.

“We can send our experts out to train people, and they can come to Serbia to do training camps and workshops,” said Milos Perisic, Serbia’s ambassador to the UAE. “We have very good capacity and we have a 200-year-old military academy in Serbia.

“We have cadets from 15 or 20 countries from around the world, even Nato members send their cadets to our defence academy.”

The exchange is expected to start by next year at the latest.

The agreement includes a joint project to develop mid-range mortar systems. It also includes training in Serbia’s military medical academy.

“They will learn civil medicine with specific surgeries and operations that happen in battlefields,” he said. “They basically learn to be soldiers and doctors.”

Courses last three to four years and it will be the first time Serbia will play host to Emiratis for such a programme.

“The UAE is like Serbia, it’s a small country but with a good military service,” Mr Perisic said.

“We live in a world where there are constant threats and we learnt from the past that we don’t want to have conflict and war, but if someone attacks us, we have to defend our country.”

Diplomatic relations between the countries resumed in 2012 after four years of tension because of the UAE’s formal recognition of Serbia’s neighbour, Kosovo, as an independent state.

“Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited Serbia last month and our minister of defence plans on visiting the UAE,” he said.

Mr Perisic said he was not sure whether the recent law requiring military service in the UAE was the reason for the new defence cooperation, but that Serbia was “ready to help”.

“We have a strong defence industry, good experts, good knowledge, good schools and if they need our help we will support them,” said Mr Perisic. “Now our job is to make this agreement active [and] to develop this cooperation.