The European Union suspended talks on Wednesday on forging closer ties with Serbia, punishing Belgrade for failing to cooperate fully with UN prosecutors hunting Ratko Mladic and other war-crimes fugitives.
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the talks on a stabilisation and association agreement — a precursor to any membership talks — were postponed mainly because Mladic, the former Bosnian-Serb commander wanted for genocide, remained at large.
Chief UN war-crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte lashed Belgrade and accused Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of delivering an ”unacceptable” and ”double-faced” call on Wednesday on Mladic to give himself up.
She said she was ”particularly disappointed” by the failure to catch Mladic despite assurances from Belgrade that he would be in custody in The Hague by April 30.
The EU’s talks with Serbia and its federal partner Montenegro had been due to resume on May 11 and Rehn gave no date for when they might take place. ”It is disappointing that Belgrade has been unable to locate, arrest and transfer Ratko Mladic to The Hague tribunal,” he told reporters.
”The commission has therefore decided to call off the negotiations on the stabilisation and association agreement. The commission is ready to resume negotiations as soon as Serbia achieves full cooperation,” he said.
He said he made the decision after telephone talks on Serbia’s cooperation earlier on Wednesday with Del Ponte, who is chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague.
”Her assessment is negative,” he said.
Mladic and the Bosnian Serbs’ wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic are wanted by the court for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and have been at large since 1995. The genocide charges relate to their roles in Bosnia’s brutal 1992-1995 war, notably the Srebrenica massacre of an estimated 8 000 Muslim men and boys.
Serbia denies knowing Mladic’s whereabouts but it recently admitted he had been under military protection until mid-2002 and had been paid a pension until December.
Del Ponte chided Serbian authorities for putting their efforts into getting Mladic to voluntarily surrender, a tactic she said was ”completely unrealistic and simply wrong”.
”The obvious conclusion is that I was misled when I was told at the end of March that the arrest of Mladic would be a matter of days or weeks,” she said at a press conference, slamming authorities’ efforts as ”unprofessional”.
In Belgrade, Kostunica urged Mladic to give himself up for the sake of his country.
”It would be best of all for Ratko Mladic to follow the example of all other officers and go to The Hague,” he said in a written statement issued after the European Commission suspended talks on closer ties.
”It has never happened in our history that the people and the state have paid the price for the mistakes of just one officer,” Kostunica said. ”By remaining in hiding, Mladic is causing serious damage to our state’s national interests.”
The statement is the clearest indication yet from Kostunica that Serbian authorities have no knowledge of the whereabouts of Mladic.
”This issue is about the rule of law,” Rehn said in Brussels. ”Serbia must show that nobody is above the law and that anyone indicted for serious crimes will face justice.”
The prospect of joining Europe’s rich club has been a powerful incentive for reform in the troubled Balkans. Macedonia was made a candidate to join the EU last year based on its rapid progress.
”The stabilisation and association agreement would bring important benefits for citizens, for example in expanding trade and attracting investment,” Rehn said.
”Our initial goal of concluding the negotiations by the end of 2006 is still within reach, but only if there is a dramatic improvement in cooperation with the ICTY so that the negotiations can resume without delay,” he said. — AFP
