Arrests of General Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic are a condition for Serbia’s EU membership said EU Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fuele to his Serbian hosts.

“It is up to Serbia to prove that it is doing everything so as to arrest the two remaining fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic. Our official position is that this continues to be the main condition,” said Fuele’s spokesperson Angela Filote.

She hopes that Serbia’s EU membership application to the European Commission will be accepted next month but that the decision will be made by the Council of the EU.

Fuele said that the adoption of the Serbia-EU Resolution on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice by the UN General Assembly represents a new beginning in Serbia-EU relations, adding that it is time for the EU to focus on Serbia’s EU membership candidacy.

Serbia’s Director of the Office for European Integration Milica Delevic said that recognition of Kosovo’s independence by Serbia is not a formal condition but said that that it is important that Kosovo does not become an issue of dispute among the EU member states.

“It is important for every debate on Serbia at the Council of Ministers to have a political climate in which decisions on Serbia’s progress are experienced as something that is not disputable and something that does not divide the EU member states,” Delevic said.

“If Serbia takes into account only the issues that the EU agrees on fully instead of also taking into account the issues there is a consensus on, decisions about our country’s progress towards the EU will be made with difficulties. The adoption of the joint resolution by the United Nations General Assembly showed that it is better to be a catalyst for reaching unity within the EU rather than a permanent stumbling stone among the EU member states,” Delevic thinks.

Ethnic Hungarian President of the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina Sandor Egeresi said that now is the right time for Serbia to speed up its pace on the EU path.

“Now is the right time for Serbia to speed up its EU integration process, and Vojvodina is ready to assume the role of the driving force in the process,” Egeresi said.

Egeresi did not specify what will he do if Serbia does not meet his deadlines.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic noted that there is a discrepancy in topics that Belgrade and Pristina wish to talk.

“Representatives of the so-called state of Kosovo want to discuss technical issues while Serbia wants to talk about status issues,” said Dacic.

“Had an end been put to the issue of the status of Kosovo with this document Serbia would have been defeated,” said Dacic.

The outgoing British Ambassador to Kosovo Andy Sparkes has stated that the talks between Pristina and Belgrade will be conducted in two phases, and that, among other things, they will touch upon the so-called six-point plan of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Several issues should be solved: the functioning of Kosovo’s police, the application of laws, and the operation of courts in the north of Kosovo, Sparkes said in an interview to the Pristina daily Koha Ditore.

Representatives of the parliaments of Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Turkey met in Pristina on Monday expressing their support to the promotion of dialogue in the region and a dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia on issues of mutual interest in the “spirit of the U.N. General Assembly Resolution of September 9, 2010.

September 22, 2010
SERBIANNA
Tanjug
Beta
Agencies

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