Nederland zou toetreding Servië niet langer blokkeren ondanks lopende zaken tribunaal (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Dutch foreign ministry has declined to explicitly rule out giving Serbia EU candidate status without first handing over top war crimes fugitives to the international tribunal in The Hague.
Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn put the idea into play in remarks to press in Belgrade on Tuesday (17 May).
"It is not a condition that Mladic and Goran Hadzic should be arrested and be transferred, it is the political will and the efficiency of the co-operation of your government with the ICTY [that matters]," Asselborn said, referring to the two most senior war crimes fugitives still at large and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Asked by EUobserver if the Netherlands agrees with Luxembourg, the Dutch foreign ministry on Wednesday sent this website a written statement.
"Full co-operation of Serbia with ICTY has always been put forward by the Netherlands as [the] necessary condition for further steps towards Serbian EU membership. Political will is not enough: Serbia must prove that it meets the requirements. Best proof of full co-operation would be [the]apprehension and extradition of the two remaining fugitives, Mladic and Hadzic," the communique said.
When pressed to clarify whether "best proof" of full co-operation is the only level of proof that the Netherlands would accept, or if other action short of handing over the men might be enough, a Dutch diplomatic source opted to maintain the ambiguity.
"That is all we are prepared to say. This has always been our position," the contact said.
The Dutch communique added that ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz' report on Serbia to the UN Security Council on 6 June "will be key to EU decision making on Serbia later this year."
The European Commission is preparing to publish in November an opinion on whether or not Serbia should take the next step on the path to EU membership. Any decision will have to be endorsed by all 27 EU countries.
The prevailing mood in EU capitals is to press ahead without Mladic and Hadzic. But the Netherlands has in the past insisted on first seeing the fugitives in the dock.
Ratko Mladic is suspected of giving the order to murder 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men in the town of Srebrenica in 1995. The massacre has a special importance for the Netherlands because its UN-hatted soldiers at the time failed to stop the killings in their 'safe zone.'
For his part, the ICTY's Brammertz last week said he believes Mladic is hiding in Serbia. But the latest opinion poll by Serbia's National Council for Co-operation with The Hague Tribunal said just 34 percent of people would support handing him over. Forty percent said he is a "hero" and 78 percent said they would not give information on where he is.
The debate comes at a sensitive time for EU policy in the western Balkans.
On one hand, Serbia is co-operating with the EU in talks on improving day-to-day co-operation with authorities in Kosovo, which seceded from Serbia in 2008.
But strong tension remains, with the hawkish Serbian deputy prime minister Ivica Dacic, who belongs to the party of the late Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic, on Wednesday suggesting that Kosovo should be partitioned.
"A compromise solution would be to set a demarcation line between the territories where Serbs live and the territories where Albanians live," he told the B92 news agency, adding: "Serbia believes that Kosovo should remain a part of it ... it is difficult to think that would be possible in the foreseeable future except through war."
Commentators fear that any changes to Kosovo's territory could open the Pandora's Box of ethnic divisions in the region. Ethnic Serbs in Bosnia this week dropped plans for a referendum on secession only due to EU pressure. Ethnic Albanian leaders in Macedonia have also spoken of a possible split.