Balkan nations must improve rights record: watchdog

(BELGRADE) - Balkan countries hoping to join the EU must do more to improve their human rights record, including holding war crimes suspects accountable, a major rights group said Thursday.

Human Rights Watch surveyed Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo in its annual report on the region.

"If governments in the Balkans are serious about European integration, they need to give greater priority to human rights," Wanda Troszczynska-van Genderen, Western Balkans researcher for the group, said in a statement.

The watchdog registered mixed progress in the region on war crimes accountability, abuses against ethnic minorities and obstacles to the return of displaced persons.

In Serbia, the organisation noted that cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal has improved, although it has still not led to the arrest of the court's most wanted fugitive, Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic.

The European Union has said that full cooperation with the UN court is a precondition for Belgrade's possible entry into the European bloc. EU-member the Netherlands insists that full cooperation means Mladic's arrest.

In Croatia, a country considered to be the closest to becoming an EU member, war crimes suspects have been prosecuted, but a "disproportionate number of defendants are Serbs, and its cooperation with the tribunal has been inconsistent," the NGO said.

It said progress on accountability for war crimes has been slowest in Kosovo but praised "some encouraging signs," such as the start of a small number of war crimes proceedings by the new EU justice and police mission EULEX.

Both Serbia and Kosovo were condemned for their treatment of Roma minorities, with the report saying they have been pushed towards "marginal position."

Human Rights Watch also warned of harassment of human rights defenders and independent journalists in the Balkans.