EU rewards Serbia for efforts to hunt down war criminal Mladic

The European Union has decided to reward Serbia for sustaining the hunt for war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic on the back of an encouraging report from a top United Nations prosecutor, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Monday.

Mladic, the Serb military chief during 1992-1995 Bosnian war, stands accused of genocide for allegedly masterminding a massacre in the town of Srebrenica, the bloodiest incident in Europe since the end of World War II, DPA reported.

Serbia's advance towards EU membership is conditioned to "full cooperation" with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

"I think there is a consensus that the Association and Stabilisation Agreement for Serbia can proceed," Hague told reporters in Luxembourg. He was referring to a pre-accession deal signed in 2008 but frozen pending Serbia's compliance with its obligation to the ICTY in The Hague.

The outgoing Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, confirmed the decision was taken after the ICTY chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, personally reported to EU chief diplomats.

"(He) has stated - like he did a year ago - he is satisfied with the continuing Serbian cooperation," Verhagen said in a written statement to the press.

The Netherlands, whose UN-mandated soldiers were guarding the Srebrenica before being driven out by Mladic's army, which then proceeded to execute some 8,000 men and children, is one of strictest EU nations on the issue of ICTY cooperation.

Despite failing to catch the last two fugitives on the tribunal's list, over the past months Serbia has stepped up its actions, handing over Mladic's wartime diaries to prosecutors and arresting his wife on suspicion of holding weapons illegally.

Hague said Brammertz' assessment on Serbia and fellow Balkan country Croatia was not entirely positive.

"He gave us a report over lunch on Serbia and Croatia which showed that ... both countries, although they have done a great deal of cooperation with ICTY, still have a lot to do."

As a result, Serbia did not take a second step towards EU membership, as the application it submitted in December to join the bloc was not passed on to the European Commission for technical assessment.

That was something that Serbia-friendly EU nations such as Italy were pushing for.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the decision was put off also because Germany had to consult parliament before backing such a move.

Croatia, on the other hand, is being criticised by Brammertz for the reticence shown in handing over the war diaries of Ante Gotovina, a former general it had to arrest as a pre-condition to start accession talks with the EU.

As a result, EU countries are refusing to open technical negotiations on justice matters, reducing Zagreb's chances to complete talks by the end of the year, leading to accession in 2012.