Serbia faces negative report

Serbia faces negative report

Del Ponte is also scheduled to visit Belgrade on Monday for talks with Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica during which she is expected to scold the Serbian premier for his country's continued lack of cooperation with the UN war crimes court, Serbian media reported Thursday, quoting her spokesman Anton Nikoforov.

Her report to the EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, whom she is scheduled to meet at a seminar in Helsinki, is a key factor in deciding the fate of stabilization and association talks between Serbia and the EU.

The talks have been frozen since May over Serbia's failure to arrest the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić.

The report was expected to be negative, as Mladić remains out of the reach of justice a decade since the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him for genocide.

The cancellation of a political directors-level meeting of Serbia and the EU Troika, which was scheduled for Friday, appears as a sign of things to come. The meeting was scrapped in anticipation of Del Ponte's "clarifying" report.

The EU Troika consists of the foreign ministers of the current and future EU presidency holders - Finland and Germany, respectively - and Enlargement Commissioner Rehn.

Belgrade media earlier revealed that Rehn, in a letter sent last week, had already warned Kostunica that time was running out for concrete signs of cooperation with ICTY.

Brussels informally suspended the stabilization and association talks, which were aimed at bringing Serbia and Montenegro closer to EU membership, in May. The talks were this week resumed with Podgorica, three months after it became independent from Serbia.

Serbia staved off some pressure a few months ago with promises that Mladić would be located through an "action plan," but the package of secretive measures brought few concrete results.

"The EU policy is clear - without cooperation with the ICTY, there will be no talks and so far it turned out that the action plan was not implemented," said Ksenija Milivojević of the European Movement in Serbia.

Another slap on Serbia's wrist and another delay of the talks would be in stark contrast to the euphoria in the region following the announcement Wednesday that Bulgaria and Romania would be allowed to join EU on January 1.

The decision could even trigger the fall of Kostunica's coalition government, as the G17 Plus party has threatened to pull out of the cabinet if the EU refuses to restart the talks by October 1.