LUXEMBOURG: EU troika meet on Serbia's progress and listen to UN Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte's assessment of Serbia's cooperation with the ICTY -- a condition of the talks

The European Union was holding talks with Serbia in Luxembourg on Monday (October 16) on the status of the association talks. The meeting comes a few days after Serbian President Boris Tadic in Finland pleaded (on Friday) for a short postponement of a U.N. final status proposal for the breakaway province of Kosovo, likely to lead to its independence from Belgrade. EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said it was important to listen to UN Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte's assessment of Serbia's cooperation with the ICTY. "We have to listen to Carla del Ponte in order to see if the situation as far as the cooperation with ICTY moves on. If that is the case, then it would be good news and we could start moving on the SAA (association agreement) which is very important. But I want to say that the decision had been taken so far, if is is corroborated also by the fact that the elections can take place before the end of the year, that would be very good news for Serbia together with the economic situation," Solana told reporters. Serbia is widely expected to hold an early general election in December and U.N. peace envoy Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, is due to present his plan for Kosovo's final status in early November with a view to completing a deal by the end of the year. EU foreign ministers are due to support Ahtisaari when they meet on Monday and Tuesday in Luxembourg and are set to warn parties against any attempt to delay the process. "Striving for a negotiated settlement should not obscure the fact that neither party can unilaterally delay or block the status process from advancing," EU foreign ministers are set to say, according to a draft statement agreed by EU ambassadors. Rehn said he expected EU governments to agree in the next two weeks on a mandate for negotiations with Serbia on visa facilitation, to enable students and young people to visit the 25-nation bloc more easily. However, he stressed that negotiations on closer ties between Belgrade and Brussels would remain frozen until the U.N. war crimes prosecutor certified that Serbia was cooperating fully with the Hague tribunal. Talks were suspended in May after Belgrade failed to keep a promise to arrest and hand over former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic for trial on genocide charges. EU foreign ministers are due to review Serbia's progress at a meeting with Belgrade's foreign minister on Monday in Luxembourg which chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte will attend. EU officials said they had no indication that she would say she was satisfied with Serbian cooperation. The major-power Contact Group overseeing Balkans diplomacy agreed in New York last month there should be no delay and asked Ahtisaari to put forward his own plan in the light of deadlock in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. Some EU diplomats have said it would make sense to allow a few weeks' slippage for the conclusion of the final status process, which will require a U.N. Security Council resolution, to accommodate the Serbian election. But since all Serbian parties are equally opposed to relinquishing sovereignty over the province, British and U.S. officials argue there is no point in dragging out the process. U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said last month that she was "not satisfied" that Serbia is carrying out its own action plan to track down, arrest and extradite Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic. In an assessment sinking Serbia's dwindling hopes of resuming suspended talks with the European Union this year, she had said Belgrade was still "far away from full cooperation" with the war crimes tribunal.

ITN Source | October 19, 2006

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