By Daisy Ayliffe - 1st May 2006
Serbia is attempting to extend the EU deadline on delivering war crimes suspect general Ratko Mladic to the Hague.
Officials in Brussels have suggested Serbia will now hand over Mladic on May 10 - after Belgrade missed the EU’s April 30 deadline.
“The last information I have received is that Belgrade will deliver Mladic on May 10. The longer the delay, the less credible Belgrade appears,” EU official Erhard Busek told Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The next round of EU talks is scheduled for May 11, but Serbia’s failure to handover Mladic on time could make a suspension of talks on closer ties with Belgrade likely.
“If Mladic is not in the Hague by the end of the month, we have no other options than to disrupt SAA negotiations,” EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn warned on Friday.
There would be "no other option than to call off the next round of negotiations," he added.
Bosnian Serb military leader Mladic is wanted over his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, during the 1992- 1995 war in Bosnia.
On Wednesday Rehn will meet Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the UN tribunal in The Hague to discuss the next steps.
Serbia-Montenegro opened talks on a Stability and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU in October 2005.
The agreement is seen as the first step on the country's path to eventual membership of the EU.
Suspension of EU talks would come at a difficult time for Serbia.
On May 21 Montegro will vote in a referendum on independence and Kosovar Albanians are also turning up the volume on their calls for independence.
“Serbia’s European future is under threat,” Serbian foreign minister Vuk Draskovic said in Brussels on Friday.
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