Director of Tanjug News Agency Branka Djukic took part Saturday in the ninth annual session of the world public forum dubbed 'Dialogue of Civilization' held on Rhodes Island (Greece).

Participating in a panel where Greek Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism George Nikitiadis also held speech, Djukic qualified dialogue as the only way leading to the solution of issues in the Western Balkans, and pointed to the unsolved issues in the region.

"There is probably no other place in the world where the word 'dialogue' is pronounced as frequently as in the Balkans, but this region also seems to be the place where it is the most difficult to realize it, given that it still carries, two decades after the armed clashes in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the heavy burden of unresolved disputes", she pointed out.

Recalling the history of disputes in the region, Djukic stressed that the awareness of previous mistakes can help avoid new ones and find constructive solutions, which would open a new perspective for the region and accelerate its path to the EU.

"Good-neighborly cooperation, however, must be founded on justice and mutual understanding of the rights and interests of others, because otherwise solutions to open issues will stay out of reach," she underlined.

For the region we live in, she added, the essential question is to find the seemingly impossible - a common language and a common vision, "despite differences or precisely because of the difference."
"This vision is the European Union, not as a goal but as the framework in which to build a new world, in the sense of civilization, culture and values, a more just society," Djukic said.

She recalled that the Tanjug agency organized a conference of South East European news agencies in Belgrade last year, in the desire to look what the media can do to promote the European values, and enable the people from the region to receive information from different sources and from different viewpoints.

The panel dubbed 'Dialogue Model of International Community Interaction' gathered several analysts and university professors from Russia, the USA, Germany, Australia and India.

More than 400 representatives of scientific, cultural and state institutions and media from around 20 countries discussed a system of ideals and values for existence and constant improvement of mankind as a basis for projecting and constructing the future, the main methods for constructively resolving world problems, technological, political and social challenges to mankind, economy and globalization, etc.

Among the participants of the forum opened by President of Russian Railways Joint Stock Company Vladimir Yakunin are former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Mikhail Bogdanov, former EP chairman Walter Schwimmer, UN Assistant Secretary-General Jomo Kwame Sundaram, UNESKO official Katerina Stenou, Royal Institute of International Affairs expert Royal Institute of International Affairs and others.