(LUXEMBOURG) - EU foreign ministers on Tuesday agreed to sign a key trade and aid pact with Bosnia next month, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel announced.

The announcement, at their meeting in Luxembourg, came after the Bosnian authorities lifted the main obstacle to signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) by adopting long-disputed police reforms.

The ministers, in a statement, "welcomed the conclusion of the first phase of the police reform as well as progress on three other areas of concern.

"The Council (of ministers) expressed its readiness to sign the SAA. Technical preparations are underway," they added.

"We have decided we shall not wait beyond May," Rupel -- whose nation holds the rotating EU presidency -- told a press conference.

He added that the signing ceremony would probably take place at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers on May 26. Before then, the formal text will have to be translated into the relevant languages.

The European Union has stressed that the whole Balkan region has a future home within its ranks.

EU and Serbian officials signed an SAA at the same meeting on Tuesday, though with the proviso that it won't come into force until Belgrade cooperates fully with the international war crimes court in The Hague.

In Sarajevo, the Muslim chairman of Bosnia's collective presidency criticised the European Union for moving towards closer ties with Serbia even as important war crimes suspects remain at large.

"Today's event shows that Serbia enjoys priviligies as no other country," as it failed to strictly fulfill EU-required conditions, he said, citing the European Union for what he called "double standards".

Earlier this month, lawmakers in Bosnia adopted police reforms, ending years of dispute among Croat, Muslim and Serb leaders about the extent to which they should integrate the country's separate ethnic police forces.

Since its 1992-1995 war, Bosnia has consisted of two autonomous entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation -- linked by weak central institutions.

Brussels had called for unification of the separate police forces, but the Bosnian Serbs insisted on retaining control of police in Republika Srpska. The Croats and Muslims wanted the forces unified and put under central control.

Eventually the EU and the Bosnian parliament accepted reforms that will involve setting up seven new state-level police coordination bodies, without immediately affecting the autonomy of the two forces.

General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC)

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