Serbia expects EU accession talks next year after Mladic capture

Jun 6, 2011, 17:47 GMT

Brussels - Serbian President Boris Tadic signaled Monday that he expected his country to make progress towards European Union accession after complying with the bloc's request to arrest suspected war criminal Ratko Mladic.

The EU had made Mladic's arrest and extradiction to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) a key condition for taking forward Serbia's application for membership, which was presented in December 2009.

'We are expecting to reach candidate status (by) the end of this year and to open accession talks at the beginning of next year, I hope in the Spring,' Tadic said after meeting EU President Herman Van Rompuy in Brussels.

Tadic's visit to came less than two weeks after Mladic's capture, on May 26. The timeline he suggested for Serbia's EU progress would allow his pro-western government to burnish its record before facing elections in Spring 2012.

Tadic said Serbia was not asking for any favours and would meet 'all obligations' falling on EU hopefuls. Notably, he pledged to arrest the last remaining ICTY fugitive, former Serbian Croat leader Goran Hadzic.

But he did not mention Kosovo - despite analysts and diplomats warning that mending ties with its independent former province will be another precondition for Serbia's EU membership.

Read more about EU

Read more about Serbia Diplomacy