BELGIUM: EU Enlargement Commissioner calls off membership talks with Serbia, because a war crimes suspect hasn't been handed over to the Hague

Record ID: 695157

  • Title: BELGIUM: EU Enlargement Commissioner calls off membership talks with Serbia, because a war crimes suspect hasn't been handed over to the Hague
  • Date: 3rd May 2006
  • Summary: (EU) MOUNT OZREN, BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA (FILE - MAY 19, 1994) (REUTERS) RATKO MLADIC WALKING UP HILLSIDE WITH SERB SOLDIERS; MLADIC AND SERB OFFICER POINTING TO FRONT LINE; MLADIC AND BOSNIAN SERB LEADER RADOVAN KARADZIC LOOKING AT FRONT LINE
  • Embargoed: 18th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium
  • City:
  • Country: Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Conflict,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA3Y081OG0MMU7DD3H1HAEMJGD9
  • Story Text: EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday (May 2, 2006) he saw little alternative but to call off negotiations with Serbia and Montenegro over its European Union membership since fugitive war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was not handed over to the Hague tribunal on former Yugoslavia by the end of April.
    Brussels had warned Belgrade it would suspend the next round of scheduled talks on a formal association accord unless Bosnian Serb wartime commander Mladic, wanted for genocide, is in detention at the Hague war crimes tribunal.
    "The settings and the current facts are clear enough, we don't see Ratko Mladic in the Hague and our understanding is there is no full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, that means that we don't seems to have any other options but calling off the negotiations with Serbia on the stabilisation and association agreement. These negotiations can be resumed, can be relaunched once we see there is full cooperation even on the very same day we can resume the talks," Rehn said.
    Rehn said he would talk to United Nations Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte on Wednesday morning.
    He once more appealed to Serbia to move forward and think of its future within Europe.
    "These political challenges are important for Serbia and this is the time for Serbia to come to terms with its past and I hope that Serbia now chooses the European future and leave the nationalistic past behind. This is the golden opportunity for that," Rehn said.
    Rehn spoke after talks with Serbia Vice Premier Miroljub Labus on regional aid. Labus said Brussels and Belgrade would maintain normal relationships on all matters other than the Stability and Association pact.
    But he decried the fact that all the work which had been done on that issue would be halted because of his government's failure to hand over Mladic.
    "We are very close to finishing our negotiations unfortunately there are some political conditions. The condition is full cooperation with the tribunal, if it doesn't happen in the next 24 hours, so the next round of negotiations will be called off. Not just the next round but all following rounds as well. So there will be no secret technical negotiations, there is no need for more technical meeting because we settled almost everything. Of course there will be a normal relationship between Brussels and authorities in Belgrade relating to other bilateral issues but there will not secret technical negotiations within the stabilisation and association framework. So that means that what we achieved in the first few months will be lost in the following months and maybe the whole process would have a strong delay," Labus said.
    Asked if Serbia could deliver Mladic in the next 24 hours, he said it was unlikely.
    "Everything is possible but what didn't happen for the last two years is difficult to expect to happen in the next 24 hours," Labus said.
    Scarred by war, sanctions and isolation from 1991 to 2001, and blamed for much of the mayhem attending the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia faces a sea of problems as it struggles for a place in the European mainstream, even with EU sympathy.
    This year it is likely to lose treasured Kosovo province, where the ethnic Albanian majority wants independence, and faces possible divorce from its old partner Montenegro, where half of voters favour a split.
    Neither scenario is calculated to boost Serb confidence, and there are fears, founded on poll figures showing their enduring popularity, that a series of slaps in the face for Serbia could just possibly bring ultranationalists back to power.
    To the hardliners, handing over a "war hero" such as Mladic would be a sell-out demanding a snap election to oust the government responsible and put the West in its place.
    Analysts in Belgrade think such a risk is easing the arm-twisting tactics of the EU, which wants a soft landing on Kosovo and no crisis over Montenegro when it votes on independence on May 21.
    Even if EU talks are suspended in May, Serbian media reports say Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica does not expect the halt to last very long, putting back the ultimate signing of an accord by maximum two months, to November this year.
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