http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfedaf38-ea3d-11dc-b3c9-0000779fd2ac.html
FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Serbia threatens to freeze EU ties By Neil MacDonald in Belgrade Published: March 5 2008 02:05 | Last updated: March 5 2008 02:05 Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, has demanded an end to any progress on ties with the European Union unless Brussels drops its support for Kosovo's independence. Mr Kostunica's nationalist-leaning faction within the coalition government will back a resolution in parliament on Wednesday put forward by the opposition Radical party that would rule out EU integration for Serbia unless the 27-member bloc cancels a planned police and justice mission and abandons political backing for the two-week-old breakaway state. The move will split the coalition government, with Mr Kostunica's coalition partner - pro-EU president Boris Tadic's Democratic party - insisting EU integration must continue despite the Kosovo crisis. The result could be early parliamentary elections, which would follow the recent presidential polls when Mr Tadic won re-election ahead of his Radical party challenger. The Democratic party has a pro-EU majority in the cabinet but Mr Kostunica can summon a "patriotic" majority in parliament with the support of the Radicals and the smaller Socialist party, formerly headed by the late Slobodan Milosevic. Together these groupings can muster 144 seats in the 250-member assembly. Mr Kostunica said on television on Tuesday that the EU member states - more than half of which have already recognised Kosovo - must instead "recognise Serbia in its existing constitutional borders". "If someone is ready to put party interests ahead of state interests, then that one is breaking the unity of Serbs to preserve Kosovo," he added. Mr Tadic, has tried to portray Serbia's continued claim over ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo as comparable to the problem in Cyprus - an open territorial dispute - but not a hindrance to membership for the ethnic-Greek dominated Cypriot republic, which joined the bloc in 2004. The coalition between Mr Kostunica and Mr Tadic has been under strain since it began last year. But since Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17, Mr Kostunica has abandoned tacit co-operation with Mr Tadic, raising fears that he could lead the largest ex-Yugoslav country back into isolation. Kosovo has been under UN rule since Nato pushed Mr Milosevic's forces out in 1999. EU officials are pressing the UN to hand over authority to the Kosovan government, which has accepted EU-led supervision to ensure protection of ethnic minorities, including 120,000 remaining Serbs. Mr Kostunica only grudgingly condemned the violence in Belgrade on February 21 in which rioters set fire to the US embassy, putting the responsibility on countries that recognised the "false state of Kosovo". The Serbian authorities have interrogated a man suspected of setting the embassy on fire, the Belgrade district court said Tuesday. The suspect, identified as "Milan Z" would stay in detention for at least another month and faced up to 12 years in jail if charged and convicted, said Ivana Ramic, a court spokeswoman. One protester died in the fire, while 200 people were injured.
