EU-Serbia ties to be approved

The European Union is set to approve a first step towards closer ties with Serbia and Montenegro today after a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect turned himself in to the UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia, diplomats said yesterday.

Ljubisa Beara, indicted for alleged involvement in the 1995 massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, surrendered to Serbian authorities and was extradited to the Hague on Saturday, the Serbian government said.

"This is extremely good and timely news and we think the rest of the indicted war criminals should follow his example," Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, told Reuters.

The timing was unlikely to have been a coincidence. EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg today, are to hear a report from the chief UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, on Balkan countries' cooperation with the court, and to decide on initiating closer relations with Belgrade.

The United States has also warned Serbia it faces indefinite international isolation unless it hands over war crimes suspects.

A key condition for launching a long-delayed EU feasibility study for a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia and Montenegro, the first stage towards eventual EU membership, was better cooperation with the Hague tribunal.

Mr Solana and External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten visited Belgrade last week and reached a tentative agreement to begin the process. Formal negotiations would start next year.

Each stage will be dependent on the Serbian authorities tracking down and handing over suspected war criminals, of whom several are believed to be hiding in Serbia and Montenegro.

Beara, born in Sarajevo in 1939, was indicted in March 2002 for alleged war crimes committed in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in the summer of 1995. He worked for Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, the most wanted suspect believed to be hiding in Serbia.

Mladic's political chief, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, is thought to be still hiding in the Bosnian Serb republic, although a series of NATO raids has failed to net him.