EU to consider resuming talks with Serbia after elections

EU to consider resuming talks with Serbia after elections
December 04, 2006 9:59 AM

BRUSSELS, Belgium-The European Union will consider resuming talks with Serbia on a trade-and-aid agreement after the Balkan country's elections next month, EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Monday.
The EU suspended negotiations in May saying Belgrade must fully cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal by tracking down and handing over top suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic.
However, the bloc has been worried that isolating the Balkan country could encourage hardline nationalists at a time when tensions are running high over the fate of Kosovo.
Solana said the EU would look again at the possibility of resuming talks after the Jan. 21 parliamentary elections, but he insisted the bloc would still stress the need for cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague.
"With Serbia, we will restart again after the elections," Solana told reporters.
Any decision to resume negotiations on the agreement, which is designed to prepare nations for eventual EU membership, would have to be taken in a meeting of the 25 EU governments.
Despite concerns that Serbia is sheltering Mladic, international powers want to reach out to Serbia to prevent anti-Western hardliners making gains in the elections which are expected to be followed by the publication of a U.N. key report on Kosovo's future status. The province's ethnic-Albanian majority wants that report to lead to independence, an outcome strongly opposed by Serbia.
Solana welcomed the decision by NATO leaders last week to invite Serbia to join the alliance's pre-membership outreach program Partnership for Peace, along with two other Balkan nations, Bosnia and Montenegro.
"NATO took a very wise decision," Solana said after meeting NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
In another gesture to Belgrade, the EU last month launched negotiations with Serbia and other Balkan nations on visa arrangements to make travel to the EU easier and cheaper.
Solana and de Hoop Scheffer met to discuss widening cooperation between their organizations in Kosovo after the U.N. decision on the province's future. NATO is maintaining its 16,000 strong peacekeeping force there in case of renewed unrest, and the EU is drawing up plans for a mission to bolster local police.
"The planning is being done, taking into account all the possible outcomes," Solana said.
EU officials said they expect the European Parliament next week will vote to approve a euro158 million (US$210 million) budget for security operations in 2007, clearing a possible obstacle to the plan to send up to 1,000 armed police officers to Kosovo.
Kosovo has been an international protectorate since NATO forced the Serbian army to cede control in 1999. The international community is now awaiting a proposal by U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari on its future status.
Belgrade insists that the province must not gain independence, but ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million population, are equally adamant that they will only accept a clean break from Serbia.

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