Serbia makes bid for better US ties (www.rt.com)

He did not give a timeline for any of those commitments, however.

Pointing to his recent meeting with State Departments Counselor Derek Chollet, Djuric said that Serbia intends to intensively deepen its relations with the US, noting the growing volume of trade, military cooperation with the Ohio National Guard, and the growing presence of Serb basketball players in the NBA.

To counter three decades of unjustly negative media coverage, Djuric said he would tell his American hosts that Serbia is now focused on development, a higher standard of living, and values that are entirely equivalent and compatible with European and American.

NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999, on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Meanwhile, President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday objected to the rhetoric of some US officials as being stuck in the 1990s.

Vucic was responding to remarks by James Rubin, who was the State Department spokesman during NATOs 1999 war on Serbia and is now head of the US Global Engagement Center, a government propaganda outfit.

Last month, on the anniversary of the conflict, the US ambassador in Belgrade said the Serbs should set aside their grievances. Vucic responded that Serbia will never forget the aggression of the West.