Pact Optimism

Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic said that his country had already fulfilled the EU's conditions for the agreement, which is seen as the first formal step on the road to EU membership.

"We very much hope this is going to become the reality come January 28, and if not January 28 at the next earliest opportunity," said Jeremic on Thursday, Jan. 10.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also agreed that the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on that date was the ideal time for signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA).

Agreement rests on co-operation with The Hague

But he said the go-ahead depended on full cooperation by Belgrade with the UN war crimes tribunal based in The Hague. He suggested that the new chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, Serge Brammertz, visit Serbia before a decision is taken.

Jeremic said Belgrade would do everything possible to ensure that war criminals, most eminently ex-General Ratko Mladic, are handed over to the tribunal.

Mladic, who is accused of masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, is believed to be hiding out in Serbia.

Germany says the pact is in Europe's interest

Steinmeier said Europe had a strong interest in seeing "that the democratic and European path taken by Serbia remains the path for the future of this country."

Differences over the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo were not bridged at the talks. Steinmeier said the recent talks to resolve the status issue had ended in failure, but Jeremic said they had achieved progress and called for more time to reach a negotiated settlement.

The EU and the United Nations want Kosovo to assume a supervised form of statehood, but Serbia, supported by Russia, only wants to grant more autonomy to the province, which is mainly inhabited by ethnic Albanians. Kosovo has threatened to declare independence unilaterally.