Wednesday, July 20, 2011

EU: 'This is a further important step for Serbia in realising its European perspective'

Serbia has taken another important step towards fulfilling its European Union ambitions with the arrest of its last major wartime fugitive, the EU said.

Capturing fugitives wanted by a United Nations war crimes tribunal has been a major pre-condition set by the EU for Serbia, which applied to join the bloc in 2009.

Belgrade announced that it had detained Goran Hadzic, a Croatian Serb wartime leader indicted for crimes against humanity during the 1991-95 Croatian war, less than two months after it caught general Ratko Mladic.

"The European Union strongly welcomes the arrest of Goran Hadzic by Serbia's authorities," the EU's top officials said in a statement.

"This is a further important step for Serbia in realising its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the bloc's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said.

It is likely to take years before Serbia is ready to become an EU member state. But Belgrade hopes the European Commission will offer it official EU candidate status and a green light for starting accession talks when it issues its annual report on enlargement in October.