EU, Serbia sign deal on closer ties
LUXEMBOURG (AFP) — The EU signed up to closer ties with Serbia on Tuesday, nudging it towards eventual membership despite disputes over Kosovo's independence and Belgrade's failure to catch war criminals.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic and EU foreign ministers gathered in Luxembourg signed the pact, which Europeans hope will boost the chances of pro-Europe forces over nationalists in elections there next month.
Pro-Western groups in Serbia took to the streets of Serbian cities within moments, waving pro-European placards and honking car horns as the flags of the EU and Serbia fluttered from windows.
Despite the rejoicing, the EU ministers agreed the pact would not come into effect until Serbia cooperated fully with the war crimes court in The Hague.
"It is a very important moment in our history," said Serbian President Boris Tadic, who flew in to oversee the signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), the first step towards EU membership.
"The signing of this agreement and other similar accords with other Balkan nations allows us to turn a happier chapter on our history," he said, an allusion to the long years of conflict as Yugoslavia broke up.
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said the signing of the deal marked "a historic day for Serbia and for the EU."
Serbian officials stressed, however, that it did not mean Belgrade had given up its sovereign rights over Kosovo, even though most EU nations have recognised the majority ethnic Albanian territory as a separate state.
Tadic said he hoped everything would be in place for his country to become an official EU candidate nation by the end of the year.
However EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said there remained several "conditions" to fulfil before then, including creating a "convincing track record" on the SAA and making progress on fighting corruption.
Most EU nations wanted to sign the SAA, primarily to boost Serbia's pro-European parties ahead of a general election on May 11.
EU ministers had worked through the night trying to persuade Belgium and the Netherlands to drop their previously staunch opposition to signing the pact.
The two had insisted that Belgrade had first to cooperate fully with the UN war crimes court by handing over suspects, chief among them former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic.
Mladic -- along with the Bosnian Serb war-time political leader Radovan Karadzic -- has been charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
To overcome the objections it was agreed that the SAA would not be ratified by the 27 member states, and therefore not enter into force, until Belgrade cooperates sufficiently with the UN war crimes court.
Jeremic denied the deal with the EU was purely symbolic.
"This is not an empty shell, this is an important political step," he said.
The Muslim chairman of Bosnia's collective presidency criticised the EU for allowing the pact to be signed while Serbia "still refuses to arrest those accused of genocide committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina" during the 1991-95 war.
"Today's event shows that Serbia enjoys privileges as no other country," said a statement issued by Haris Silajdzic.
He said Bosnia's own EU aspirations were being left behind and accused the bloc of applying "double standards".
Bosnia -- the only country in the Balkans region without any contractual relationship with the EU -- adopted police reform legislation earlier this month, a precondition towards signing its own SSA.
Tadic and Jeremic had persistently called for the accord to be signed before Serbian legislative elections to boost their chances of prevailing over nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Serbian nationalists have been incensed by the fact that most EU nations have swiftly recognised the February declaration of independence of the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo.
In Belgrade, Kostunica said Tuesday that Serbia's parliament would "annul" the pact with the European Union after the elections next month.
"The new government and the parliament of Serbia will immediately annul Tadic's illegal signature," he said in a statement.
"We will never allow anybody to sign for the independence of Kosovo in the name of Serbia and that is why today's signature is not worth anything."
Tadic opposes Kosovo's independence but not at the expense of Serbia's EU integration.
