Dutch ease on Serbia, but want no agreement

Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen wants to ease visa conditions for Serbs entering the EU, he told Dutch parliament on Thursday.

But he continues to resist the signing of a so-called stabilisation and association agreement between the European Union and Serbia because the country is still not fully cooperating with the UN Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague (ICTY). Verhagen said he does see positive developments in Serbia.

One of the key issues in the Netherlands' opposition to stronger ties with Serbia is the fact that Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander believed to be responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, is still on the loose. On Wednesday, Bosnian state television broadcast several video clips it said show the fugitive Mladic living freely in Serbia. The TV Federacije station said the home videos were taken over a period of years, one as recently as 2008. But Belgrade officials say the most recent video is from 2001, when Mladic was last seen in public.

The Dutch played an important part in the Srebrenica tragedy; some 400 Dutch soldiers were stationed there as part of a UN peacekeeping force that was supposed to protect the civilians. The Netherlands is now the only country in the 27-members EU bloc that is still resisting the stabilisation agreement with the former Yugoslav republic. The agreement would be an important step towards a future Serbian membership of the European Union.

Last week, the prosecutor of the Yugoslavia tribunal, Serge Brammertz, said Serbia had made progress in its cooperation with The Hague, and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying "Serbia is making efforts to comply with its international obligations." Those statements put pressure on the Dutch to be more flexible on Serbia.

"Now that we again see improvements in the Serbian cooperation with the ICTY, the Dutch government is willing to look at other possibilities for cooperation between the EU and Serbia," Verhagen told the Dutch parliament. He said Serbia should be offered some kind of "prospect".

Serbian president Boris Tadic told Serbia’s FoNet that Verhagen’s stand was positive, "but it is still not the time to say it is all over". He added that "an atmosphere of unrealistic optimism should not be created."

At the meeting in Dutch parliament, Verhagen also voiced strong criticism against Croatia, another candidate for membership of the European Union, which he said is not doing enough to cooperate with the ICTY.