Nieuwe aanklager Joegoslavië tribunaal wil streng en vasthoudend blijven (en)
The new United Nations war crimes prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, intends to hold to his predecessor's line on Serbia's cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The arrest of the four remaining fugitives in the country will remain among his top priorities.
Mr Brammertz on Wednesday (16 January) met with Slovenian foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel - whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency - to assess Serbia's cooperation with the tribunal ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting on 28-29 January.
Some member states are pushing for the signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Serbia at this meeting, provided that Belgrade proves it has done its best to arrest the fugitives.
Others, however - such as the Netherlands, which hosts the ICTY - are strongly against letting Serbia get closer to the EU before it has handed over the remaining war crimes criminals, in particular general Ratko Mladic, who stands indicted by the ICTY on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
"If Serbia really wants a European future, they must also cooperate with the handing over of one of the people who is responsible for the only genocide in the European continent after the second World War," Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters in The Hague on Wednesday.
"My signature [of the SAA] is linked to the full cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague and the best proof that there is full cooperation is that they deliver Mladic to The Hague," he added according to the Associated Press.
The new UN prosecutor has not yet issued a report of his own assessing Serbia's cooperation with the ICTY, which means that the one prepared in December 2007 by the then chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, is still valid, the Slovenian presidency explained in a statement.
But Mr Brammertz, who this month took over the post, has stressed that he will follow Ms Del Ponte's line.
"Obtaining the arrest and transfer to the tribunal of the four remaining fugitives, particularly Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, remains an absolute priority," Mr Brammertz said in a statement.
General Mladic was the chief of staff of the army of Republika Srpska - the Serbian entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina - in the 1991-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Just before stepping down in December, Ms Del Ponte had expressed her conviction that "Mladic is there, in Serbia. All the indications, all the evidence that was collected by the national authorities prove that he is there."
She had called on the EU not to soften its stance on Serbia and to refrain from establishing closer contacts until remaining war crimes suspects have been handed over.
The other three fugitives that are still wanted by the ICTY are the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, former Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic and Bosnian Serb police commander Stojan Zupljanin.