BRUSSELS -- The Netherlands is ready to remove a hurdle to Serbia's bid to join the European Union if a coming report says the Balkan nation is cooperating fully with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, a Dutch foreign-ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.
While the EU has pledged that Serbia eventually can join the 27-nation bloc, the Netherlands has been holding up a key Stabilization and Association Agreement with Belgrade. Such agreements are considered a necessary first step before membership talks can begin.
Late Wednesday, the main parties in the Dutch parliament gave foreign minister Maxime Verhagen approval to "act accordingly" if a report due Dec. 3 from Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, shows that Serbia is cooperating fully with the tribunal, the spokeswoman said. The decision was the clearest signal to date that the Netherlands may be ready to approve the agreement.
Dutch governments have taken a particularly hard line in pressuring Serbia to come to terms with its role in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, in part because of the humiliation of Dutch peacekeepers protecting the so-called United Nations safe haven of Srebrenica in 1995.
Bosnian Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the territory, as the Dutch peacekeepers looked on helplessly. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys are believed to have been executed in the aftermath.
Last year, a newly elected pro-Western government in Belgrade captured wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and delivered him to the tribunal in The Hague. But with Gen. Mladic and another Serb indictee still in hiding, the Netherlands has continued to block Serbia's stabilization agreement.
The Dutch government hasn't seen a draft of Mr. Brammertz's report, but Mr. Verhagen told parliament Wednesday that "the first signals are positive," according to the foreign-ministry spokeswoman.
The Netherlands' hard line on Serbia has created tensions within the EU. Many governments say the bloc needs to keep Serbia on track for membership to maintain stability in the region. The EU supported Kosovo's secession from Serbia last year and is trying to manage the fallout from that, as well as an increasingly unstable situation in Bosnia.
The EU is also expected later this month to begin consideration of a request from Serbia's regional rival Albania to start membership talks.
The Netherlands has already begun to soften its position against Belgrade, saying it won't stand in the way of granting Serbs visa-free travel to the EU -- a development expected next year.
Last week, Serbia's government said that it, too, plans to apply for EU membership talks by the end of the year, a move that Italy has since backed publicly. The Netherlands would oppose such an early move, however, the foreign-ministry spokeswoman said, arguing that Serbia shouldn't skip the association agreement.
Separately, Thursday, an appeals bench at the war-crimes tribunal cut the sentence of a Bosnian Serb general found guilty of crimes to 29 years from 33 years. The court upheld Dragomir Milosevic's convictions on five counts of murder, terrorizing civilians and inhumane treatment while leading troops who besieged Sarajevo. The Court found he was not guilty of planning three instances of shelling for which he was convicted, but remained responsible for them as commander.
Source:wsj.com
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