Vuk Jeremić

Vuk Jeremić
President of the United Nations General Assembly
In office 18 September 2012 – 17 September 2013[1]
Preceded by	Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser
Succeeded by	John William Ashe
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia
In office 15 May 2007 – 27 July 2012
President	Boris Tadić Slavica Đukić Dejanović (Acting) Tomislav Nikolić
Prime Minister	Vojislav Koštunica Mirko Cvetković
Preceded by	Vuk Drašković
Succeeded by	Ivan Mrkić
Personal details
Born	(1975-07-03) 3 July 1975 Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia
Nationality	Serbian
Political party	Independent Democratic Party (until 2013)
Spouse(s)	Nataša Jeremić
Residence	Belgrade, Serbia
Alma mater	BA from Univ. of Cambridge MPA/ID from Harvard Univ.
Religion	Serbian Orthodoxy[2]

Vuk Jeremić (Serbian Cyrillic: Вук Јеремић, Serbian pronunciation: [ʋûːk jěremitɕ]; born 3 July 1975^[3]) is a Serbian politician, President of the United Nations General Assembly for the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was also a Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Serbia from 2007 to 2012. Jeremić is also the president of Tennis Federation of Serbia.

A long-term member of the Democratic Party, after the internal changes of leadership which he opposed and the appointment of Dragan Đilas in the place of Boris Tadić, he was excluded from the party on 14 February 2013 but rejected to resign from parliament, despite the party's decision obligating all ex-ministers to resign.

Education

Vuk Jeremić was born in Belgrade on 3 July 1975 to Miško Jeremić and Sena Buljubašić. Growing up in privileged circumstances as his father was the CEO of the large state-owned oil company Jugopetrol, he began his high school studies in Belgrade, where he was a high school student of Boris Tadić while the latter, a B.A. graduate in psychology, held a teaching position, but completed them in London. Jeremić stayed in England for his post-secondary education and graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Theoretical Physics as a member of Queens' College.

While attending the University of London for PhD studies in financial mathematics,^[4] he worked for a number of institutions as a student temp in London including Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals.

Jeremić attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, graduating with a degree of Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID). He was a co-founder and the financial manager of the Organisation of Serbian Students Abroad, founded in 1997.^[4]

Political career

From July 2004 to May 2007, he served as senior foreign policy adviser to Boris Tadić, the President of Serbia. In February 2004, he was appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Democratic Party, and in February 2006 to the main board of the Democratic Party.^{[citation needed]}

Foreign Minister

Vuk Jeremić with George Papandreou in Athens in October 2009.

During the period after Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008, Jeremić lobbied across the world against the recognition. He traveled to countries with which Serbia enjoys good relations from the times of Yugoslavia and some of these visits were the first after a lengthy economic and political crisis in Serbia, during which the normal diplomacy development was prevented. His visits included those to Central and South America (Argentina,^[5] Brazil,^[6] Chile,^[7] Cuba,^[8] Jamaica,^[9] Venezuela^[10] and Mexico^[11]), Africa (Egypt,^[12] Libya,^[13] Gabon,^[14] DR Congo,^[15] South Africa,^[16] Ghana^[17] Morocco,^[18] Algeria,^[19] Lesotho,^[20] Namibia^[21] and Nigeria^[22]) and Asia (China,^[23] India,^[24] Indonesia,^[25] Malaysia,^[26] Singapore,^[27] Vietnam,^[28] Kuwait,^[29] Azerbaijan,^[30] Thailand,^[31] Philippines,^[32] Pakistan,^[33] Syria,^[34] Oman^[35] and Lebanon^[36]). He also traveled to summits of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran, Iran,^[37] African Union in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and Malabo, Equatorial Guinea,^[38][39] Thirty-eight regular session of the Organization of American States in Medellín, Fortieth regular session of the Organization of American States in Lima, Regional economic forum in Mexico, 2010 Forum of the Alliance of Civilizations in Rio de Janeiro and the Arab League meeting in Egypt.^[40] In Tehran he had meetings with Foreign Ministers of Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Brunei, Kenya, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, Bhutan, Laos, Bangladesh, Singapore, Venezuela, Panama, Chile, Colombia, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Bolivia. In Mexico Jeremić had meetings with Felipe Calderón, Daniel Ortega, Antonio Saca, Álvaro Colom Caballeros, Manuel Zelaya and Fernando Araújo Perdomo. In 2009, he met with Vatican prelate Pietro Parolin in order to confirm and approve the non-recognition of Kosovo by the Holy See.^[41]

Foreign visits of Vuk Jeremić

British journal The Economist has said that Serbian diplomacy, led by Jeremić, is "on steroids"^[42] due to frenetic activity. Serbian media have frequently reported that Western leaders are increasingly nervous about the successes of Serbian diplomacy and issued a stern warning to Jeremić to "cool down" his activities in the wake of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision on legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence.^[43] Jeremić was the first foreign official to visit the new Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou following his election.^[44]

International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Kosovo

Jeremić, taking the position that Kosovo's declaration of independence was illegal, asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on Kosovo's declaration of independence; he said the ruling would "be a precedent".^[45]

The court ruled that Kosovo's declaration of independence had been legal;^[46] Jeremić's tactic had "backfired badly".^[47]

United Nations General Assembly presidency

Jeremić was elected president of the Sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly (starting in September 2012) in the 2012 election. Notably, under his watch, United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19 granted Palestine non-member observer state status. In addition, Jeremic facilitated the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in the UN General Assembly.^[48]

During the presidency of the Sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly, Jeremić met with over 50 heads of state or government and more than 100 ministers of foreign affairs, incluled U.S. President Barack Obama,^[49] China's President Xi Jinping,^[50][51] French President Francois Hollande,^[52] and the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso.^[53]

In honor of the 16th birthday of Malala Yousafzai, a survivor of an attack by the Taliban in Pakistan for her outspoken stance on the right to receive an education, Jeremić convened a United Nations Youth Assembly.^[54] At the UN, Malala delivered her first public remarks since recovering from the attack.^[55][56] The Youth Assembly took place on 11 July 2013, and was organized together with UN's Special Envoy for Global Education and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Democratic Party

At the 2012 parliamentary election, he has been elected MP of the Democratic Party. During the regime change with Tadić's withdrawal and rise of the new leader Dragan Đilas, as member of the pro-Tadić camp, Jeremić withdrew from all positions in the Democratic Party. He is at odds with Serbia's new opposition leader Đilas, who demands him to pay the consequences of an unpopular government and resign from his position of Member of Parliament, which he staunchly rejects. Eventually, Jeremić was excluded from the Democratic Party on 14 February 2013.^[57]

Personal

He is married to Nataša Jeremić (née Lekić), a journalist and news anchor on Radio Television of Serbia.^[58]

Through his maternal grandmother Sadeta Buljubašić (née Pozderac), the daughter of wealthy land-owner Nurija Pozderac and his wife Devleta, Jeremić also stems from the Pozderac family, considered the most influential Bosnian Muslim political family during communist Yugoslavia (Nurija's sons and Sadeta's brothers Hamdija and Hakija Pozderac occupied some of the most powerful political posts for years in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina).^[59]

In November 2012, Jeremić's great-grandfather and great-grandmother Nurija and Devleta Pozderac were posthumously awarded the honorific of Righteous among the Nations by the Jewish victims memorial Yad Vashem for their acts of saving Jews during World War II in Cazin on the territory of the Ustaše-run Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia. The Jews Nurija and Develta sheltered, escaped during transport to Jasenovac concentration camp.^[60]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vuk Jeremić.

• Official biography
• Works by or about Vuk Jeremić in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Recasting Serbia’s Image, Starting With a Fresh Face, The New York Times, January 16, 2010