BELGIUM: EU to initial Serbia pact

The European Commission will initial on Wednesday a pact setting Serbia on the road to eventual EU membership to reward improved efforts to arrest war crimes suspects. European Union Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday (November 6) he expected the signing of the so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia to happen next year, but stressed it could only be finally signed once Belgrade cooperated fully with the U.N. war crimes tribunal. The process will kick off on Wednesday (November 7) in Brussels, Rehn said. ''I have decided to initial the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia tomorrow here in Brussels in the Jean Monnet room here in the Berlaymont. Of course, this is not the end of the road. ICTY cooperation cannot be a stop-start process. More still needs to be done to reach full cooperation which remains a necessary condition for the signature of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement. In any case, this marks a real turning point for Serbia," Rehn told journalists at a news conference to present his annual assessment of efforts made by EU membership hopefuls. Rehn said he had decided to initial Serbia's Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) deal after U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told him she was getting better access to archives and other key documents, and considered there was a political will to make arrests. But he said Serbia still had to achieve full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and that it arrest and hand over suspects such as Bosnia Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic, sought on genocide charges. Rehn also said progress across the Western Balkans had in general been uneven, and noted the continued uncertainty surrounding the fate of the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo, whose independence claim Belgrade hotly disputes. ''The countries of the Western Balkans made, in the past year, steady but uneven progress. We still have major challenges and serious risks ahead of us such as settling the status of Kosovo, state building in Bosnia-Herzegovina and reinforcing democracy in Serbia. However, at the same time, please recall that we have experienced also significant positive developments. The European Union will soon have a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with all the countries of the region. If the countries meet the conditions, the SAAs will be agreed with all countries of the Western Balkan by the end of 2008,'' Rehn added. Aside from Serbia's difficulties, the signing of Bosnia's SAA has been stalled by its failure to create a unified state-level police force. ''The text of the SAA with Bosnia-Herzegovina has been ready for almost a year. I am ready to initial it as soon as the conditions have been met, especially once concrete progress on police reform is fully proven. It is high time for the political leaders of the country to decide if they want to move Bosnia-Herzegovina forward on the road to Europe or stall and fall behind their neighbours,'' Rehn said. In one bright spot, he said membership negotiations with Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic, had reached cruising speed and were entering a decisive phase, showing the entire region that the prospect of EU membership was a reality for all. However, he made no recommendation for when Macedonia, an official EU candidate since 2005, should open accession talks, calling instead for a more constructive and inclusive political dialogue in the country to revive momentum for reforms. Rehn also presented its annual progress report on Turkey, the European Union's biggest and most controversial candidate.

ITN Source | November 7, 2007

Tags:. .achieve. .stressed. .status. .reforms. .recall