EU Deal 'Signed with Serbia, without Kosovo'
Balkan Insight - 06 May 2008

Belgrade - EU and Belgrade officials have criticised Belgium’s Foreign Minister for saying the EU pre-membership deal was signed “with Serbia alone, without Kosovo.”

“My understanding is that we signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, SAA, with Serbia alone, without Kosovo,” said Karel De Gucht.

In Belgrade, Serbia’s Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic said De Gucht’s words “confirmed what Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has been saying all along.”

Samardzic, of Kostunica’s nationalist Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, said the statement proved that the signing of the SAA in fact meant signing off on Kosovo’s independence.

Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, however, said De Gucht’s remarks were “for internal political use only.”

Belgium joined Netherlands in opposing Serbia’s signing of the SAA, widely seen as the first step toward EU membership, until Belgrade is deemed to be fully cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, based in The Hague.

The two countries eventually gave in and accepted to sign the deal on April 29, although Belgrade will only gain benefits of the deal when there is cooperation with The Hague Tribunal.

“Belgium opposed the SAA with Serbia and De Gucht’s words therefore have an exclusive domestic political purpose,” Jeremic said.

In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's spokeswoman Cristina Gallach also criticised De Gucht’s statement, saying that the SAA signed with Serbia “has a neutral stand towards Kosovo’s status.”

The SAA’s text which Kostunica’s cabinet unanimously agreed to initial last November, stipulates that Kosovo is under United Nations’ administration as per UN Security Council Resolution 1244, passed at the end of the 1998-1999 conflict between Serb forces and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority.

In the SAA’s article 135, it says the treaty does not deal with the status of Kosovo, Serbia’s former southern province, which declared independence on February 17.

The signing of the SAA, however, prompted a bitter row in Belgrade between pro-European and nationalist politicians who are about to face each other in early general elections due on Sunday.

The main topic dominating the election campaign is Serbia’s future links with the EU, with pro-Europeans pushing for closer ties with Brussels, arguing Serbia’s interests will be best defended within the bloc, while nationalists say Serbia should not join the EU unless it accepts Kosovo as a part of Serbia.

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