Radovan Karadzic, Sarajevo is not your city, and you have no right to say that it is, just as you do not have the right to say in public, even if it’s in court, that someone has dug up bones around Bosnia and brought them to Srebrenica to make a fake graveyard. This is insulting.
Italian, Dutch FMs Disagree on Serbia
Belgrade | 28 October 2009 | Bojana Barlovac
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini (left), Serbian President Boris Tadic (right). Archive
"My suggestion is that Belgrade should seriously think about submitting an application for EU membership," the daily quoted Frattini as saying.
Serbia's Foreign Affairs Ministry announced in September that Serbia is completely committed to securing the country's EU candidacy this year. A formal precondition for Serbia’s applying for the bloc membership is the implementation of an Interim Trade Agreement with the EU.
Verhagen reiterated in an interview with daily Vecernje Novosti that the EU Council of Ministers has decided that the trade pact with Serbia cannot be unfrozen until full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, is achieved.
The trade pact is part of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, SAA, signed last spring and immediately suspended due to the Netherlands’ strong opposition.
The Dutch are opposed to unblocking the deal before war crimes fugitives Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic are delivered to the ICTY.
"That still has not happened, so the stance of the Council of Ministers, and our stance, cannot change,” Vecernje Novosti quoted Verhagen as saying.
The European Commission, EC, in its annual report on prospective EU member states, called on the EU to unfreeze the deal.
The Italian foreign minister believes that there is no legal impediment to Serbia applying for EU candidacy.
”Submitting an application for EU membership is certainly not related to the implementation of the Interim Agreement," Frattini stressed.
