Time Running Out
January 28, 2008
The European Union's attempt to sign a full Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia before the presidential election on Feb. 7 was hampered by the Netherlands, which demanded full Serbian cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia (ICTY) before any deal was signed.
The pact, which would have secured closer ties ahead of the election run-off between Serbia's pro-European President Boris Tadic and nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic, a pro-Russian hardliner, was intended to boost Tadic's campaign and help ease Serbia's accession to the EU.
Instead EU ministers agreed to sign an interim agreement on cooperation covering trade and visas.
"This is a text that will open up doors for Serbia to the EU," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel told reporters.
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic welcomed the EU's invitation to sign an interim political accord after the run-off election.
"Today is a great day," he said. "I hope the citizens of Serbia will give us a mandate on Feb. 3 to sign this agreement."
Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans said his country, which has led opposition to a lenient line on Belgrade, would continue to oppose the signing of the full SAA.
"We will not sign till we have full cooperation with the ICTY," he told reporters.
Timmermans insisted that his country is "prepared to sign an SAA with Serbia at the moment Serbia hands over the people indicted by the Yugoslavia tribunal," and not before.
The tribunal is seeking the arrest and transfer of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic on genocide charges over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims.
The European Union has made full cooperation with the tribunal a condition for signing the SAA, which is a first formal step on the path to EU membership.
No change in EU policy
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the signing of an interim deal did not mean the EU was shying away from Serbia.
"The Stabilization and Association Agreement won't be signed in the coming days but this doesn't mean that our policy has changed," he told journalists. "We want to send a signal that our hand is stretched out to Serbia."
The interim agreement could assist Tadic in his campaign against Nikolic but EU officials admitted that they had received mixed signals from Belgrade as to whether a signing ceremony would hurt or help the pro-Europe candidate's prospects.
Tadic currently trails Nikolic who took a five-point lead in the first round this weekend.
EU boost to pro-Europe candidate ahead of Kosovo move
EU leaders are keen to see Tadic win to bolster pro-European forces ahead of an expected declaration of independence by politicians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
The leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, who make up 90 percent of the province's 2 million people, say they are within weeks of declaring independence from Serbia.
The EU plans to send a 1,800-persn strong mission to Kosovo to help ease its transition to local rule, but is still waiting for a signal from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to do so. The United Nations has run Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out Belgrade's forces waging a crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
Failure to deliver may increase Serbian distrust in EU
To help ease Serbia's pain in losing a province Belgrade considers to be an integral part of its territory and culture, the EU has made several moves in recent months to bring Serbia into the fold. But there is much skepticism in Serbia of the EU's motives and the latest stalling on the SAA is unlikely to help.
A failure to put an agreement in place soon would "fuel a widely present perception of permanent exclusion and unparalleled conditioning," Srdjan Gligorijevic, chief analyst for the Belgrade-based International and Security Affairs Centre think-tank, told Reuters news agency. "Serbia needs more collaborative relations with the EU, not just a carrot-and-stick approach."