Dutch veto forces EU to postpone deal with Serbia

(BRUSSELS) - Faced with a Dutch veto, EU foreign ministers gave up a bid to sign a rapprochement pact with Serbia Monday and were working on a "political declaration" to encourage pro-European Serbs, officials said.

"There will be an agreed text ... concerning an offer to Serbia ahead of the election, and which will, I hope, be completed afterwards," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner before the end of a meeting of his EU counterparts.

"I can't divulge the secrets of this offer, it hasn't yet been totally agreed," he told reporters as he left European Union headquarters in Brussels.

An EU diplomat said: "As I understand it, there is not going to be an EU-Serbia association agreement (signed Monday), but the ministers are negotiating a text."

The Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) is the first step for Balkans nations to join the EU.

Most of the ministers were keen to get it signed as quickly as possible to boost the re-election chances of pro-European Serbian president Boris Tadic, who faces a run-off vote against nationalist Tomislav Nikolic on February 3.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Serbia was close to achieving the key requirement of full cooperation with the UN war crimes court and expressed support for signing the SAA.

However, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen took a firm line on what such cooperation means.

He insisted his country was "prepared to sign an SAA with Serbia at the moment Serbia hands over the people indicted by the Yugoslavia tribunal", and not before.

The Dutch insist the Serbs must help bring former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic -- indicted for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre -- to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Mladic is indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide over the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town. Dutch UN peacekeepers were accused of standing by and letting the slaughter happen.