Jovanović served as Legal Officer in the Municipal Assembly of New Belgrade from 1961 to 1964. He has been in the diplomatic service since 1964. First he served as Yugoslav Vice Consul in Toronto, Canada between 1966 and 1970, Adviser in the Yugoslav Embassy in Kenya between 1974 and 1978 and finally as the Yugoslav Ambassador to Angola between 1988 and 1993.
From 1994 to 1997, Jovanović was Assistant Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, and subsequently Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1998 to 2000.[2] He was the Vice-President for Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Party of Serbia between 1996 and 2002 and also served as a Member of Parliament of the Republic of Serbia from 1996.
During the Kosovo War in May 1999, former Irish President Mary Robinson (then the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights) met Jovanović to challenge him over evidence the Yugoslav government was violently expelling ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.[3] The Los Angeles Times reported that about 1.8 million Albanians were believed to have fled from Kosovo, but Jovanović denied the claims.[3] He asked Robinson to condemn the NATO bombing which he said had killed about 1,200 civilians. To Robinson's irritation, President Slobodan Milošević failed to join their meeting.[4][5] Following the overthrow of Milošević on 5 October 2000, Jovanović resigned from the position of Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia on 14 October.[6]
