The European Union told Serbia today it had a month to deliver war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to justice or risk seeing its long-term bid to join the bloc put on ice.
One of the top two war crimes suspects in the Balkans, Mladic has been a wanted man since 1995 and is said to have enjoyed high-level protection from renegade members of the military and intelligence services in Serbia.
"It is high time Serbia reached full cooperation with ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) that should lead to the arrest and transfer of Ratko Mladic," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told a news conference.
"That is the way to avoid a disruption of negotiations, to avoid them being put on hold," Ne Rehn said, noting complaints from ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte that Serbia's cooperation with her tribunal had been deteriorating over the past year.
Diplomats said a final statement by foreign ministers warned only that talks risked being "disrupted" rather than suspended so as not to undermine pro-EU officials in Belgrade.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters the 25-nation EU would adopt a "go-slow" approach to future contacts with Belgrade, which could start with the cancellation of a next round of talks due in early April.
"If Serbia continues to fail to cooperate, then it risks a total suspension of the talks," Mr Straw said.
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, in Brussels to meet his EU counterparts, was optimistic Mladic could be delivered. "There is no place for pessimism. We have more than a month to overcome the Hague obstacle so as to continue SAA (stabilisation and association) talks in April," he told reporters of preliminary talks started with the EU in November.
Indicted by the United Nations in 1995 for genocide in the massacre that year of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica and the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo, Mladic went underground only in 2001.
Responding to a week of rampant media speculation that Mladic was under arrest or about to surrender, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said last week that the former Bosnian Serb army chief was still at-large but insisted that Serbia was "doing everything in its power" to bring him to justice.