Serbia 'optimistic' it can get EU candidate status in 2008

Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic has said he is “optimistic” that his country can achieve EU candidate status by the end of this year.

Jeremic also said that in an effort to “facilitate” Serbia’s chances, he is pushing the government to return all of the ambassadors it recalled from EU countries after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February.

“We have ambitious plans,” he told journalists on Tuesday in Brussels. “We hope to get candidate status later this year or in the first half of 2009 and we will work closely and vigorously with the commission and member states to make sure this is possible.”

He added, “The plan is to recommend that the government of Serbia return the ambassadors to EU countries to facilitate our chances to get candidate status by the end of the year.”

Jeremic was in Brussels to meet with EU foreign ministers and commission officials after the arrest on Monday of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is to be extradited to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

He made the statements just before EU foreign ministers released their conclusions on Karadzic’s arrest, which they called “a significant step on Serbia's path towards the EU”.

EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn called the arrest a “milestone” in EU-Serbian relations and said he fully supported the immediate implementation of the stabilisation and association agreement signed in April, which EU ministers had agreed should be conditional on Serbia’s compliance with the tribunal.

However, although pushing for further integration with the EU, Jeremic said that one of Serbia’s major foreign policy objectives remains the defence of its “territorial integrity regarding the future status of Kosovo”.

Responding to questions on why it took so long for Karadzic's arrest, Jeremic said that his government and the previous government of Vojislav Kostunica had been fully committed to capturing the accused war criminals.

“We may have just been lucky this time around,” he said.

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