Serbia, EU sign Stabilization and Association Agreement
The trade and political pact is immediately frozen pending Serbia's cooperation with the war crimes tribunal, making the signing in Luxembourg largely symbolic.
BELGRADE, SERBIA — Serbia's pro-West president and the European Union on Tuesday reached a long-delayed agreement to forge closer ties, but harsh reaction among many Serbs immediately threatened both the pact and the leaders who backed it.
European countries hoped the agreement would boost democratic forces in Serbia, with national elections less than two weeks away. But the gesture may backfire.
The controversy highlights the power struggle in Serbia between moderates who want to be part of Europe and hard-line nationalists who maintain that Europe's support for the breakaway province of Kosovo makes integration untenable. The fight is intensifying ahead of the elections, in which bitterness over the loss of Kosovo may hand victory to nationalist radicals.
Signed at a brief ceremony in Luxembourg, the so-called Stabilization and Association Agreement enhances trade and political links and clears the way for Serbia to eventually be considered for membership in the European Union. However, it was immediately frozen pending Serbia's cooperation with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, making Tuesday's signing largely symbolic.
Several European governments had opposed the accord because Serbia has not handed over top war crimes suspects who remain fugitives more than a decade after the fierce Balkan wars left tens of thousands of people dead and the former Yugoslavia a shambles.
Belgium and the Netherlands at the last minute lifted their vetoes, which allowed Tuesday's deal to go ahead.
For several European officials, the more important value of the agreement with Serbia was to boost moderate, pro- democracy forces inside the country. Serbian President Boris Tadic, who attended the signing in Luxembourg, agreed.
"Many enemies of the European future of Serbia have been frightening the citizens of Serbia that in the EU our identity will be endangered," he said, referring to the ultranationalist political parties at home. He spoke in Serbian, and the remarks and signing ceremony were broadcast live on major Serbian television stations.
But Tadic's rivals immediately seized on the accord as an election issue, portraying it as a sellout because, they maintain, Europe is trying to buy Belgrade's acquiescence to Kosovo's independence.
Vojislav Kostunica, the caretaker prime minister of Serbia, said Tadic was in effect accepting the independence of Kosovo, a "shameful and illegal" act. He said the next government would cancel the pact.
