Serbia could resume EU talks "very soon" - Rehn

BELGRADE, May 16 (Reuters) Serbia's day-old government can resume talks with the European Union ''very soon'', once it has shown enough progress on arresting war crimes suspects, a top EU official said today.

Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, visiting Belgrade just hours after parliament voted in a reformist coalition government, said Serbia had taken ''a step in the right direction'' by pledging to arrest war crimes fugitives.

The government, headed by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and formed under EU pressure after more than three months of talks, has said it is committed to working with the United Nations war crimes tribunal.

Many in Belgrade hoped the pledge would be enough to unfreeze talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, (SAA) suspended last May over Belgrade's failure to hand over top fugitive Ratko Mladic, who the EU says is aided by hardliners in the Serbian army and police.

But Rehn said the EU needed some more time to decide.

''There is already clear commitment to European integration and cooperation with the ICTY,'' he said, referring to the war crimes court in The Hague, ''this is a major step in the right direction.'' ''We expect the new government to rigorously implement its programme (on cooperation with the Hague). Once that happens, we can resume the SAA process very soon.'' A resumption of talks would boost the new government, which was formed last Friday after more than three months of haggling between the parties of Kostunica, who has flirted openly with nationalism, and pro-Western President Boris Tadic.

The West had pushed hard for a deal, spooked by the election that week of an ultranationalist as parliament speaker and fearing a power vacuum just as the United Nations mull giving independence to the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo.

Analysts say that unless Serbia is engaged by the EU, the loss of Kosovo could cause a nationalist backlash and boost hardliners who follow the anti-Western path of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

COMMITMENT, RESISTANCE Parliament voted in the government late yesterday in a dramatic session. Hardline deputies protested over a late-night police search for Mladic, who they see as a hero, and dragged the debate out to 30 minutes before the constitutional deadline.

Serbia is expected to join the 27-nation bloc sometime between 2012 and 2015.

Kostunica told MPs during the debate the government was committed to working with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But he never specifically pledged the arrest of Mladic.

''The successful completion of cooperation with the Hague is closely linked to the process of European integration,'' he said.

But he vowed Serbia would make no concessions on the breakaway province of Kosovo, which a UN-supervised process has set on course for independence, for the sake of EU ties.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO ousted Serb forces who had killed 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians in a two-year war with separatist guerrillas.

The United States and most EU states favour independence for Kosovo, but Serbia's ally Russia wants a 'compromise solution', and might veto a draft Security Council resolution to make Kosovo independent with international supervision.

REUTERS ABM ND1534