Montenegro Summer School for Young Diplomats “ Gavro Vuković”, Berane, 21 July 2009.

Closing speech, Alexander Avanessov, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative

I am very happy to welcome all of you here, and of course the Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and through you, especially the Minister Rocen who was the initiator of this endeavor.

I am very happy to express the view of the UNDP that we are very delighted to be a part of this initiative. It is part of our work, it is part of our Capacity Development Programme, and this is also part of our intention and some activities in promotion of regional cooperation.

As I can see, students are in good shape and probably have fully enjoyed the school, and lectures and discussions. The programme was very interesting, it covered a wide range of interesting issues, topics, and most importantly it was covered by those who are practically involved and who are dealing with these issues (ambassadors and representatives of international institutions present in Montenegro).

You entered with the job that is extremely fascinating, but also rather difficult, and would require from you a lot of building up knowledge and constant learning. I believe that these sessions during the Second Summer School for Young Diplomats, gave you a new opportunity to refresh your knowledge, or even to improve it, but also to those who lectured you.

This is the closing session, but we consider it as a session which will announce that next year we will continue the summer school, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we will try to make it traditional and regular exercise and we will come up with some ideas in this time between the two school on how to make this endeavor even more sustainable.