NATO to open military liaison office in Belgrade, seven years after bombing campaign

NATO to open military liaison office in Belgrade, seven years after bombing campaign
The Associated Press
Friday, December 15, 2006


BRUSSELS, Belgium
NATO said Friday it will open a military liaison office in Belgrade next week, a powerful signal of warming relations seven years after allied warplanes targeted Serbia's capital during the conflict over Kosovo.
A NATO statement said Monday's opening was a "sign of NATO's commitment to long-term stability and security and co-operation in the western Balkans."
It follows a visit to NATO headquarters Thursday by Serbian President Boris Tadic to sign a cooperation pact to prepare his country for eventual membership in the military alliance.
NATO's outreach to its former Balkan foe has sparked criticism from human rights campaigners because the alliance has dropped demands conditioning closer cooperation on progress in apprehending fugitive war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The Belgrade office, to be staffed by nine NATO military personnel headed by a French brigadier general, will be located at the Serbian Defense Ministry and will help efforts to reform the country's armed forces and coordinate logistics support to NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Serbia and NATO signed an agreement in July 2005 allowing transit through Serbia to the mission in Kosovo, which is still recognized as a Serb province but has been administered by the U.N. with the support of NATO troops since the allied bombing campaign forced out Serb troops in 1999.
NATO's opening up to Belgrade precedes key elections next month in Serbia and the publication of a U.N. report that is widely expected to support the aspirations of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population to achieve independence. Serbia strongly opposes Kosovo independence but is willing to accept an autonomy deal for the province.
Western leaders agreed at a summit in Latvia last month to invite Serbia into NATO's "Partnership for Peace" program despite its failure to catch leading war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic. Their decision reflected concerns that isolating Belgrade could encourage hard-line nationalists in the run-up to the election.
Serbia's neighbors Bosnia and Montenegro also signed up to the program Thursday.
Three other nations in the western Balkans — Croatia, Macedonia and Albania — are already in the program and are expected to join the alliance in 2008. Slovenia became a full NATO member two years ago.
Thursday's events bring into NATO's orbit all six countries that gained independence after the violent breakup of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s. The hope is that membership in the alliance — and eventually in the European Union — will permanently defuse nationalist and religious tensions that caused a series of wars in which more than 200,000 people perished.
However, while NATO pushed ahead with its opening to the Balkans, the EU was adopting a more cautious approach. Although Slovenia joined the EU in 2004 and Croatia hopes to get in by 2009, EU leaders meeting for their year-end summit stressed that other Balkan nations have a long way to go in meeting entry standards and will have to wait until the bloc resolves its own constitutional logjam before they can join.
Despite Italian and Spanish support for a softer line, the leaders were expected to tell Serbia that greater collaboration with the international war crimes tribunal is essential before talks could resume on an pre-membership agreement.