BRUSSELS - Serbia has told the European Union it has no plans to send troops into Kosovo and recent comments by a junior minister suggesting otherwise were the result of a misunderstanding, a top EU official said on Monday.
Speaking after meeting Serb Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic in Brussels, European Enlargement Commission Olli Rehn also announced they had agreed the text of a deal that is the first stage towards Serbia's EU membership.
But Rehn stressed that concluding the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) was dependent on full cooperation by Serbia in bringing war criminals to justice and that Belgrade must step up its efforts.
On Friday, Rehn demanded that Serbia clarify remarks by the secretary of state for Kosovo, Dusan Prorokovic, that Belgrade could send troops into the breakaway province of Kosovo to thwart its independence ambitions.
"I have received clarification and I have been reassured that there has been a misunderstanding and Serbia is by no means contemplating any use of force or military action," Rehn told a news briefing.
Prorokovic, a hardline nationalist, told the New York Times that if the West were to recognise a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders, it would invalidate a 1999 agreement between Serbia and NATO, signed in Kumanovo, under which Serbian troops stay out of the province.
The clarification means a visit by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to Brussels on Wednesday can go ahead.
Rehn said Serbia needed "to continue to have a positive gradient" leading to full cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunal and the assessment of chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte would be "critical" in assessing this.
Del Ponte is expected to visit Belgrade this month.
Djelic told the briefing cooperation with the Hague tribunal was one of the five priorities of the Belgrade government and that he was certain del Ponte would confirm that commitment after she visited Belgrade.
The EU has long made clear to Belgrade that it cannot advance on the road to EU membership until its shows it is doing all it can to help bring war crimes suspects including Bosnian Serb wartime commander General Ratko Mladic to justice.
Mladic is the suspected mastermind of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. The EU has made the signing of an SAA conditional on Belgrade achieving full cooperation with the Hague tribunal but not specifically on Mladic's arrest.
EU officials applauded the new Serb government's success in arresting a close Mladic aide in May but now want to know whether it has pursued those efforts and can get Mladic himself to the Hague tribunal by the end of the year as promised.
