Servië wil nog dit jaar officieel het EU lidmaatschap aanvragen (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Serbia plans to formally apply for EU membership by the end of this year and has pledged it will to apprehend war criminals as soon as possible, Belgrade's foreign minister Vuk Jeremic told European lawmakers on Thursday (5 November).
"The basic groundwork is there for Serbia to submit its official application for EU membership. We hope to do so by the end of this year," Mr Jeremic said in front of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee.
The sticking point in EU-Serbian relations is the hand-over of war criminals such as former Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladic, who still remain at large. The former general is accused of having ordered the Srebrenica massacre, in which some 8,000 Bosniaks were killed. A government official said earlier this week that a majority of Serbs are still opposed to his extradition to the Hague.
Mr Jeremic reassured MEPs that his government was "searching every square millimetre of [its] national territory" for the fugitive. "If we knew where he was, he would not be at liberty, I can guarantee that," he said.
The UN's chief prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, Serge Brammertz, was in Serbia on Thursday to review the government's efforts in catching the indictees. His assessment, due in December, will play a major role in whether member states accept Belgrade's EU application.
The Netherlands remains the strongest opponent of letting Serbia getting closer to the EU so long as Mr Mladic remains at large. The Srebrenica massacre has had a painful impact on Dutch public opinion, as it was a Dutch UN battalion that pulled out of the enclave in July 1995 shortly before the atrocities took place.
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn praised Serbia's "considerable progress over the past 12 months" and suggested the government has done enough to alleviate Dutch concerns.
"Serbia has already for some time been cooperating very well" with the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, he said at a joint press conference with the Serbian official.
The pro-European government in Belgrade last year handed over another Serb indictee of the Hague tribunal, Radovan Karadzic, whose trial started this week.
Referring to the proposed EU membership application, the commissioner said only that he "respected the sovereignty of the Serbian Republic as regards such important decisions."
Mr Rehn joined MEPs in calling for Serbia to adopt a "more constructive attitude towards Kosovo", its former province dominated by ethnic Albanians, and recognised as independent by a majority of EU states.
This issue is likely to outlive the current government, however. Speaking earlier in the European Parliament, Mr Jeremic said that his country will "never, under any circumstances, implicitly or explicitly recognise the unilateral declaration of independence - by the ethnic-Albanian authorities of our southern province of Kosovo."
When asked by MEPs to appeal to Serbs living in Kosovo to take part in next week's local elections, Mr Jeremic said it was "impossible" for Belgrade to endorse the elections, which were "in breach" of the Serbian constitution.