By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Nov 7 2007 (IPS)

The European Union has decided to deepen its political and economic ties with Serbia, despite suggestions that the Belgrade authorities could be protecting one of the most wanted men in the former Yugoslavia.

In May 2006 Olli Rehn, the EU’s commissioner in charge of the bloc’s expansion, decided to suspend talks aimed at reaching an accord on closer links to Serbia because Ratko Mladic, the general accused of orchestrating a 1995 massacre in Bosnia, had not yet been arrested.

Yet, while Mladic is still at large, Rehn gave his preliminary approval Nov. 6 to a ‘stabilisation and association’ agreement with Serbia. This could pave the way for Serbia’s eventual membership of the Union.

Rehn’s apparent U-turn has been condemned by human rights campaigners, who insist that Mladic must be brought to justice for his leading role in the killing of 8,000 Bosnians in the Srebrenica region, one of the bloodiest incidents in Yugoslavia’s violent break-up.

Indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Mladic is widely believed to be on Serbian territory. In February this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Serbia’s failure to apprehend Mladic violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

But Serbia’s President Boris Tadic, who initialled the agreement with Rehn, indicated that he was unaware of Mladic’s whereabouts. “If we are going to find some sign that Ratko Mladic is on the soil of Serbia, we will arrest him immediately and send him to The Hague tribunal,” he said. “If I have to repeat that 100 times, I am happy to do that.”

Lotte Leicht from the Brussels office of Human Rights Watch said she had “heard these kind of pledges” in the past.

“There has to be absolutely full cooperation with The Hague and every effort to identify and arrest Mladic,” she told IPS. “That cooperation has not been forthcoming.

“We’re not talking about small crimes here. People very often forget and think it’s irritating to keep talking about indicted war criminals. But it wouldn’t be like that if these were terrorists who had blown up a house with 7,000 people killed. Here we are talking about a person who has been indicted for the crimes of Srebrenica. Part of the indictment against Mladic is for genocide.”

Leicht argued that even if Mladic is not in Serbia, the government in neighbouring Croatia has set a precedent for ensuring cooperation with The Hague tribunal.

In December 2005, Croatian general Ante Gotovina was arrested in Spain by police who were reportedly following a lead from the Croatian intelligence service. Gotovina was wanted by The Hague over a 1995 massacre of ethnic Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia. Zagreb’s previous reluctance to have him apprehended had temporarily put a brake on its efforts to join the EU.

Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor with The Hague tribunal, said last month that some progress notwithstanding, Serbia is not doing enough to capture the indictees who are still at liberty.

Rehn, however, said this week that there has been “intensified cooperation”, although “it is not yet perfect”.

Out of 24 indicted fugitives in Serbia and Republika Srpska (the Serb-dominated republic in Bosnia), 20 are now in The Hague. “Serbia has to go one last mile,” Rehn added.

The arrival of Boris Tadic in Brussels this week came as something of a surprise. Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic had been expected to be the main Serbian representative at the initialling ceremony.

Tadic said that he hopes the agreement can be formally signed within the next few weeks, but smiled when asked if that means Mladic will be arrested shortly.

In response, he argued that Serbia has been working constructively with The Hague Tribunal. “We are doing this not because of the Hague Tribunal, not because of the requirements of the European Union but because of ourselves, because of our values,” he said. “We are a European nation. We are doing this for the credibility of our nation and to promote reconciliation.”

Tadic also sought to separate the fraught issue of Kosovo’s future status from that of Serbia’s EU membership. Negotiations on Kosovo are taking place under the United Nations’ auspices “in Vienna, not in Brussels,” he pointed out.

Nonetheless, a paper issued by the European Commission this week infers that Serbia is in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1244, which promotes the establishment of “substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo”, pending a final settlement on the status of this disputed territory.

According to the Commission, Serbia has “continued to discourage Kosovo Serbs from participating in the provisional institutions of self-government.” The Belgrade government, which has opposed calls for Kosovo to become independent of Serbia, has also “called on Kosovo Serbs not to participate in elections to the Kosovo provisional assembly and municipalities,” the paper said.

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