Reservations and half doubts about the political complexion of the new Serbian regime were put aside by EU Foreign Ministers yesterday to send Belgrade the most positive message they could.
Air and oil sanctions were lifted, promises were made of financial aid, and Serbia's new President, Dr Vojislav Kostunica, was asked to join EU leaders for lunch at the Biarritz summit this weekend. In addition Serbia was invited to participate in the EU's Balkan summit in Zagreb next month.
"With these measures the European Union wants to contribute to the restoration of democracy in Yugoslavia and to the success of important political, economic and social reforms which will bring Yugoslavia back into the European fold," a draft EU statement said.
The emphasis was on what the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, called "the last brick in the Berlin Wall coming down". "Today was not the day for `conditionalities' or subordinate clauses," one Irish diplomat said of the upbeat declaration agreed by ministers.
The message of welcome back into the international community will be taken to Belgrade today by the French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, on behalf of the EU Presidency. Mr Vedrine said that he hoped Mr Kostunica would also elaborate his intentions.
Diplomatic sources say that the issues of co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia, the plight of Kosovo's missing, or Serbia's international debt, will all be dealt with later and are likely to impinge on future discussions of the specifics of aid.
"We have to recognise the real- politik of Kostunica's attempts to consolidate his position," Mr Cowen said. "It's not to suggest that such issues aren't to be dealt with, but we can't deal with everything on day one."
And diplomatic efforts will also be made to reassure Serbia's neighbours that Belgrade's new status will not detract from the EU's commitment to them. Parity of esteem is the message.
The co-ordinator of the Balkans Stability Pact, Mr Bodo Hombach, who is also travelling to Belgrade, insisted that "help for Serbia must be generated separately . . . and it must happen quickly. There is an emergency with food shortages. But the infrastructure must also be restored."
Mr Cowen said that aid would have to be "additional and complementary" to the resources already committed to the region. He said that the Irish public understood and supported the EU's proactive role in the region and would not be found wanting.
He also stressed the importance of the Zagreb Balkans summit next month whose significance "has been transformed". Planned as a rallying of the regional forces against Mr Milosevic, the summit focus now has to be redirected and its agenda planned with great care to plant the seeds of regional reconciliation.
Serbia was also asked to join the regional Stability Pact process and it was promised help to reopen the Danube to shipping and in re-establising its membership and relationship with international financial institutions. The carrot of eventual EU membership was also held out with the promise to start negotiations on an EU "stabilisation and association" agreement.
Separately discussions are likely to be launched on restoring the country's relationship with the Council of Europe and the OSCE. But, as one diplomat observed wryly, Serbia is most unlikely to seek involvement in Partnership for Peace or NATO.
Earlier the UN's High Representative in Kosovo, Mr Bernard Kouchner, had appealed to ministers to seek a reciprocal "symbolic gesture" from Dr Kostunica on the issue of Albanian Kosovan "disappeared" and prisoners held in Serbia. Such a gesture would be enormously helpful in easing the mood in Kosovo ahead of elections, he said.
Estimates of the number of disappeared ranged from 3,500 to 6,000, he said, "but every day thousands of Albanian Kosovan families wake in hope of news of father, brothers, lovers . . . This can't go on".
Reuters adds:
Yugoslav authorities agreed yesterday to free four Dutchmen detained in prison since July on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the former president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, according to one of the men's lawyers.
"They are going to be released today," the lawyer, Mr Zoran Jovanovic, said by telephone from a Belgrade court where he was awaiting the release papers.
The four men had denied accusations that they were sent by Western intelligence agencies to murder Mr Milosevic.
Yesterday's decision comes after the Dutch charge d'affaires in Belgrade held talks with President Kostunica on Friday over the release of the four Dutchmen.
