Belgrade hopes to start European Union membership talks shortly, Serbia’s president said here Tuesday, evoking chances the entire Balkans region may someday join the block.

“The Serbian prime minister must respond to a European Commission questionnaire in the near future and after that we hope to submit our candidacy and open negotiations,” Boris Tadic told deputies at the Council of Europe.

Considered Europe’s top human rights body, the 41-member, Strasbourg-based council isn’t part of the European Union.

Judging his country “on the right road” to future membership, Tadic said it was critical that it conform to EU norms “so that Serbia, but also its neighbors, can adhere as quickly as possible.”

His remarks came a week after the European Parliament ratified a key Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia, which is seen as the first step towards EU membership.

The EU has made Serbia’s potential membership conditional on full co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia–a demand Tadic has vowed his country will comply with.

Fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic tops the United Nation’s tribunal’s list of war crimes suspects. He is accused of masterminding the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 people dead and the massacre in July 1995 of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

Also, former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic is wanted for the murder of thousands of Croatian civilians between 1991 and 1993.

“We will arrest them and we will extradite them” as Serbia has done with past war crimes suspects, Tadic said.

Serbia initially applied for EU membership in December 2009 but won support for the bid only after agreeing last September to start a dialogue with its breakaway province of Kosovo.
 
January 26, 2011
AFP

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