EU Ministers: no consensus on Interim Agreement with Serbia September 15, 2008
At the meeting of the EU foreign ministers in Brussels today, consensus has been no reached in view of implementation of the Interim Trade Agreement with Serbia, although most member states were in favor of implementation of the agreement, stated French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner who presided. Kouchner said that the EU will keep working to achieve implementation of the interim Agreement with Serbia soonest possible. Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz submitted a report full of lessons, underlined Kouchner adding that in a very passionate discussion, as he stated, there has been talks whether to defrost the agreement with Serbia since the pro-European Government in Belgrade arrested Hague indictee Radovan Karadzic and returned ambassadors to European countries. He specified that vast majority of the EU member states and the European Commission was in favor of defrosting the agreement, but the required unity was not reached to do so. -------- Verhagen: deblocking of the Agreement depends on Serbia 15. September 2008. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said today in Brussels that Serbia in spite of positive steps has not achieved full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal and that thus the deblocking of the Interim Trade Agreement depends on further actions of Serbia. I hope that positive steps would be taken and that this will lead to the arrest of Ratko Mladic, stressed the Dutch Foreign Minister. ‘At this moment we do not feel that the conditions have been fulfilled for deblocking of the Interim Trade Agreement and the ratification of the SAA’, assessed Verhagen. He says that he would change his position when he ‘sees results’, i.e. when there is full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. ----------- Djelic: the Netherlands have injured Serbia 15. September 2008. 19:35 Serbian Deputy PM Bozidar Djelic said in Brussels after the end of the meeting of the EU Council of Ministers who did not decide to deblock the Interim Trade Agreement with Serbia, that the Netherlands by opposing the positive decision has injured Serbia. Belgrade has done everything in its power to conclude cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, which today again passed a scandalous verdict in the case of Rasim Delic, after a series of earlier scandalous decisions regarding the perpetrators of crimes against Serbs, said Djelic. He pointed out that Serbia has growing EU support and added that at today’s meeting ministers of 25 EU countries, as well as members of the European Commission, had spoken in Serbia’s favor. However, one minister has taken on the entire assessment of cooperation of Belgrade with the Hague Tribunal, which is not good for the EU or for Serbia’s EU integration, stressed Djelic, thus criticizing Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen. Djelic announced that Serbia would continue to fulfill conditions for European integrations.
