(BELGRADE) - The Netherlands' veto on unfreezing a key accord between the EU and Serbia is not a defeat but only a "delay" in Belgrade's path towards European integration, the country's foreign minister said Monday.

"This is definitely not a big defeat, but just a delay of an unavoidable step, Serbia's full membership in the European Union," Vuk Jeremic told Serbian state television (RTS).

Earlier Monday, EU foreign ministers in Brussels failed to convince the Netherlands to drop objections to unfreezing an aid and trade pact with Serbia, despite an improvement in Belgrade's war crimes cooperation as reported by the chief prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal, Serge Brammertz.

"Serbia's full cooperation with the tribunal exists... and when we finish it, The Netherlands will have nothing to object to," Jeremic said.

The Netherlands insists that it will only lift its veto once former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, believed to be in hiding in Serbia, is captured and transferred to the court in The Hague.

Mladic -- along with the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, arrested in Belgrade in July -- was charged over the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

To encourage the pro-European Serb government of President Boris Tadic, the European Commission and most of the 27 EU countries favour the immediate implementation of the interim agreement.

However unanimous agreement is required for even the interim deal and the Dutch, host of The Hague court, are determined to see Mladic delivered first.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Monday that he hoped the agreement could be unfrozen when the foreign ministers next meet in Luxembourg on October 13.

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