Servië zegt in 2012 klaar te zijn om toe te treden (en)

Despite current tensions in Serbia's ruling coalition over the handover of a war crimes suspect to the Hague, the country's finance minister argues that in terms of political and economic reforms, Belgrade will be ready to join the EU in about six years. "After one more term in government, we will be ready. By 2012 we will have fulfilled all the reforms," Mladjan Dinkic told the Financial Times in an interview.

The optimistic remark comes at a time when Mr Dinkic's free-market-oriented G-17 Plus party is threatening to pull out of the coalition led by Vojislav Kostunica if Serbia's talks with the EU on the so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) remain frozen by the end of September. The SAA negotiations - aiming at establishing closer ties between the EU and Serbia - were suspended in May due to Belgrade's failure to catch Ratko Mladic a war crime suspect reportedly hiding in Serbia and deliver him to the UN tribunal in the Hague.

Prime minister Vojislav Kostunica presented a new action plan aimed at boosting activities leading to the general's capture in July, but both the EU and the UN chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said that concrete results rather than new strategies and documents were needed for the bloc to resume talks with Serbia. It is expected that EU officials will repeat this message in September and keep the negotiations on ice.

But Mr Dinkic said Serbia was closing in on the fugitive - held responsible for the 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. "According to the information I receive the circle [of supporters] around Mladic is very narrow. There are only very few people, and it is not as organised as it was before," he told the Financial Times.

He added "We are confident that if we resolve this issue we can completely leave the past behind," suggesting that General Mladic's capture would pave the way for "fast track" EU accession.