The EU is to stick to its demand that Serbia hand over key war-crimes suspects before it can sign a pre-accession deal, after the chief prosecutor investigating those crimes refused to soften his stance on the issue, officials in Brussels said Friday, according to dpa. According to EU diplomats, the newly-appointed chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, said in a meeting with EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana that he saw no reason to issue a new report on the Serbian government's cooperation with the ICTY. The EU has long said that Serbia has a "European perspective," but that the most powerful state in the Western Balkans cannot sign an agreement opening the way for candidate status until it cooperates fully with the ICTY, including handing over suspected war criminals such as Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladic. In December, EU officials judged that Serbia's cooperation was good enough to allow the two sides to initial the text - a Stabilization and Association Agreement, or SAA. But in the same month Brammertz' predecessor, Carla del Ponte, said that Serbia was still not cooperating fully with the ICTY. And a number of EU states - the Netherlands in particular - have insisted that they will not sign the SAA with Serbia until Belgrade hands over Mladic and other suspects. At the Friday meeting, Solana endorsed that view, stressing the importance of the EU's "conditionality," sources in Brussels said. However, several other EU states have said that they would be willing to sign the SAA before Mladic is handed over, in an effort to encourage Belgrade to maintain a pro-EU path. On January 28, the EU's foreign ministers are set to meet to discuss a common approach to Serbia. That meeting now promises to be a heated one.
