Solana Urges EU Pact with Serbia Before Polls

´We have to make all the efforts to extend our hand to the Serbian people´, Solana said.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged member states on Tuesday to make all efforts to allow the signing of a key agreement on closer ties with Serbia before elections in May.

He told the European Parliament the EU must send a clear signal to the Serbian people to encourage pro-European forces in a May 11 parliamentary election, and this could be done by signing a long-stalled Stabilisation and Association Agreement.

The Netherlands and Belgium have blocked the signing, demanding first the arrest and transfer to a U.N. tribunal in the Hague of a key war crimes suspect believed to be hiding in Serbia.

"All efforts should be made to see if we can finalise that (agreement) before May 10 and 11," Solana said. "We have to make all the efforts to extend our hand to the Serbian people."

Anti-Western feeling has grown in Serbia since February's Western-backed secession of Kosovo, the Albanian-majority province under United Nations stewardship since 1999.

Polls suggest a neck-and-neck election race between the pro-Western Democratic Party and the nationalist Radicals.

A fragile coalition of the Democrats, led by Tadic, and the nationalists of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, collapsed in March over whether Serbia should pursue EU membership despite the bloc's backing of Kosovo's secession.

EU foreign ministers, who see Serbian EU membership as vital to security in the Balkans, vowed 10 days ago to find ways to boost Serbia's pro-European camp ahead of the elections.

"CREATIVE"?

Even the Netherlands, which has vowed to block the signing of the SAA until Belgrade hands over former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, said it would be "creative" in helping Serbia move closer to the EU.

Solana said everyone in the European Union wanted to see Mladic in the Hague and the best way to ensure that was to encourage moderate forces over the ultranationalist Radicals led by Tomislav Nikolic, whom Tadic narrowly defeated in January.

"At the end of the day, if Nikolic wins the elections we will never have that," Solana said.

"The situation is exceptional and in an exceptional situation we have to be flexible ... I respect the other positions naturally, but I think it would be a good decision if we move on with the SAA."

Diplomats say other EU ministers have put strong pressure on the Dutch and Belgians to lift their veto on signing the SAA.

In recent weeks the EU has also dangled the prospect of visa-free travel for Serbs, as well as an interim deal on an SAA that was promptly rejected by Kostunica.