Serbia Calls For Speeding Up EU Accession after Mladic Arrest
World | June 2, 2011, Thursday // 17:54| views
Serbian President Boris Tadic has vowed to try to accelerate the country`s accession into the EU, following the arrest of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. Photo by BGNES.
Serbian President Boris Tadic said Wednesday he would insist that talks for joining the EU start in early 2012 after Serbian police captured former military commander and war crime suspect Ratko Mladic and he was extradited to the Hague.
Tadic said reaching a date for accession talks was a strategic goal for the country.
He emphasized that Serbia was not seeking special treatment from the European Union, giving an example with Croatia, which was accepted as a candidate EU member in 2004, with an immediate date for accession talks.
Serbia, however, applied for EU membership back in end-2009 and still lack the EU candidate status as well as a concrete date for opening accession talks.
The European Union is to announce in December whether Serbia can become a candidate member. It could then set a date for the start of accession talks.
Tadic admitted that the country had important reforms to implement to meet EU membership criteria, but said this should not obstruct the start of accession talks.
The president flatly rejected allegations that Belgrade knew Mladic's whereabouts.
"We paid the price in the moral field, in the economic field, in terms of the position of my country in international institutions," Tadic insisted.
Serbia was under enormous international pressure to arrest Mladic, wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.
Serbian police arrested the former military commander on May 26 and on May 31 he was transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to face genocide and war crimes charges.
Cooperation with the ICTY had been a key requirement for Serbia joining the 27-member European Union.
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