By STEPHEN CASTLE
Published: October 28, 2010
Published: October 28, 2010
BRUSSELS — Just days after Serbia was urged anew to increase its efforts to capture Ratko Mladic, the fugitive accused of masterminding the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, officials there increased ten-fold the reward for information leading to his capture.
The government said in a statement on Thursday that it had raised its reward to €10 million, up from €1 million, or $1.4 million. “Serbia is determined to get rid of that burden,” Verica Kalanovic, the nation’s infrastructure minister, said, according to Reuters.
But the enhanced reward is just the latest move in Serbia’s long quest to join the European Union and end a painful chapter in its past.
The government of the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, faces close scrutiny during the next year, both over its efforts to track down Mr. Mladic and on co-operation with Kosovo, the former province whose independence Belgrade does not recognize.
It was just this Monday that the European Union — despite suspicions that Mr. Mladic is hiding in Belgrade — voted to move ahead with membership talks with Serbia.
Requesting a formal study of the country’s membership bid, European foreign ministers overrode suggestions that Belgrade should first arrest Mr. Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb general. But they added that future steps toward membership would be conditional on efforts to pursue him.
The message was mixed: While the Union has opened the door a little to Serbia, it needs to do more to cross the threshold. And that reflects the complex balancing act the bloc is trying to carry off in the Balkans: Give Belgrade too much too fast and there may be no justice for victims of the Srebrenica massacre, which claimed the lives of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys and came to symbolize the brutality of the Balkan war.
“The war in the former Yugoslavia was a terrible experience,” Stefan Fule, European commissioner for enlargement, told the International Herald Tribune in an interview.
He added: “If you take a massacre like Srebrenica, for Europe not to be able to punish those believed responsible for these terrible crimes is unacceptable.”
But too hard a line could undermine Serbia’s pro-European government, helping less constructive forces in the country and potentially de-stabilizing a troubled region.
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden argued before this week’s agreement that, if the wording was too negative, this would send a signal to the Balkans that Europe had lost interest in bringing them into the fold.
The European Union has at least bought time. The European Commission’s study of Serbia’s suitability is likely to take about a year, as Serbia answers hundreds of technical questions, and while the answers are analyzed and checked. In theory, Serbia could be given candidate status at the end of next year — before its parliamentary elections in June 2012.
But in the meantime it will be expected to pursue Mr. Mladic, undertake internal economic reforms and try to hold a dialogue with Kosovo.
In September, Serbia supported a compromise United Nations resolution that dropped its earlier demands to reopen talks on the status of the former province. That followed a ruling in July by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Kosovo did not violate international law when it declared independence.
Mr. Fule said that Serbia’s “constructive approach” on Kosovo was a “critical element” in the decision this week.
But the Union is now pressing Serbia to hold talks on technical cooperation with Kosovo and is having some success.
Ivan Vejvoda, executive director of the Balkan Trust for Democracy, said Serbian public opinion “seems to be fully on board on trying to resolve these issues.” There was, he added, a recognition of the need for a “slow normalization and that these practical issues need to be resolved.”
Since five E.U. nations have refused to recognize Kosovo, the Union can hardly demand that Belgrade does so. But Brussels will want to see evidence of a working relationship between Belgrade and Pristina.
Serbia also faces big challenges in continuing democratic and market reforms, Mr. Vejvoda said.
But the biggest obstacle remains Mr. Mladic, an issue that is acutely sensitive, particularly in the Netherlands, which carries a sense of guilt over Srebrenica. It was lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers who failed to prevent the massacre.
The Netherlands also hosts the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the U.N. court that hopes to try Mr. Mladic.
Without the arrest of Mr. Mladic, Serbia will not face up to its past, some diplomats argue.
The E.U. deal this week made any future steps for Serbia toward the European Union conditional on the agreement of all E.U. nations that Belgrade is cooperating fully with the court, giving the Dutch a veto over any further steps.
But there are risks in being too tough, diplomats say, particularly when it is clear that the Union is split on whether it wants to admit Turkey and other Balkan countries.
“It is right to give a clear signal to Serbia,” said Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society Institute-Brussels and a former E.U. official. “All the anti-enlargement rhetoric around Turkey should not do collateral damage in the Balkans.”
She added: “The enlargement magic works when the countries know that they are going to join in the next couple of governments, and the Serbian government cannot be sure of that.”
During the next 12 months the U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, is expected to report twice on Serbia’s cooperation and, if Mr. Mladic remains at large, his verdict is likely to be crucial.
Mr. Vejvoda said he believed that the government is trying hard to catch Mr. Mladic. “The pressure is to resolve this as quickly as possible,” he said.
The language from Belgrade this week supports that theory. “Let’s not kid ourselves — we must wrap up that cooperation” with the U.N. court, the Serbian deputy prime minister in charge of E.U. affairs, Bozidar Djelic, said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. “Every next move will be harder if we do not fulfill that condition.”
But cynics say they have heard it all before, and that only the capture of Mr. Mladic will prove Serbia’s commitment. From his hiding place, Mr. Mladic still casts a long shadow over Serbia’s efforts to join Europe’s mainstream.
ny times
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