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GUARDIAN Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:09:05 GMT
End to EU's visa restrictions for 10m Serbs prompts move but failure to arrest Ratko Mladic remains obstacle to process
Serbia is expected to submit its formal application for EU membership todayin the latest move to shed its pariah status after the conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
President Boris Tadic will submit the request in Sweden, which holds the 27-member bloc's rotating presidency, joining the queue that includes the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Iceland and Turkey.
In an indication of improving ties between Brussels and Belgrade, the EU last week dropped a 20-year-old visa requirement for Serbia, as well as for Montenegro and Macedonia, affecting some 10 million people.
The EU visa requirement remains in place for Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania, but it will be reviewed next year.
Citizens of former Yugoslavia had enjoyed free travel to other European countries in the past, but visa requirements and fees were introduced as the federation disintegrated amid war in 1991. The policy caused much resentment as residents were forced to wait in long queues at EU embassies.
Serbian membership, however, still faces considerable obstacles, not least its glaring failure to arrest Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb General wanted for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal.
The ratification of the EU's pre-membership stabilisation and association agreement is on hold because the Netherlands wants to see Mladic first extradited to the Hague tribunal. Tadic, the leading reformist figure in Serbia acknowledged the application was only a start.
"It is a completely different matter whether we will get the candidate status before we complete our co-operation with the Hague tribunal," he said yesterday.
Some analysts say it could take as long as 10 years for Serbia to become a member of the EU and that the visa-free travel regime is compensation for the long wait.
Only one former Yugoslav republic – Slovenia which joined in 2004 – is in the EU. Croatia, which became a member of Nato in April, hopes to conclude its EU entry talks in 2010 and join in 2012. Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro have already applied for membership but have yet to start talks.
Serbia
European Union
Ratko Mladic
Mark Tran
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GUARDIAN Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:06:19 GMT
"Twenty eight years and 91 days!" said the elated east Berliner I met walking up the Friedrichstrasse soon after the wall was breached. On the day the Berlin Wall went up, 13 August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to the cinema in west Berlin, but he, then aged 11, had been too tired. Next morning, they awoke to the sound of tanks. In all his adult life, he had never been to the western half of his own city. He told me how moved he was by an improvised poster that read "only today is the war really over".
Remember, remember, the 9th of November: the night that ended the short 20th century. If I say "the fall of the wall", what image do you see in your mind's eye? An exultant crowd dancing atop a wall covered in colourful graffiti? But those were almost all westerners dancing on the wall, and they'd climbed up from the western side, which was the one covered in graffiti.
This night, in its essence, was not about them. It was about the men and women who for more than 28 years would have been mowed down before they got within graffiti-aerosol distance of the wall from the eastern side. (An East German had been shot dead while trying to escape to the west as late as February 1989. His name was Chris Gueffroy. The frontier guards who killed him got a medal and a reward of 150 East German marks.)
This night was about the East Germans who, by turning out in such numbers at the frontier crossings, transformed what was supposed to be a communist regime's planned, controlled opening of the frontier into a triumph of people-power and a festival of freedom.
So here is the image to remember: An east Berliner appears through the frontier crossing, amid the elated crowd. Pale-faced, wearing some kind of a padded jacket, his breath is visible as a frosty plume against the cold night sky. He has just got through. He has probably never set foot in the west in his life. Incredible. Unglaublich!
He sees the television camera, looks straight at it, and shouts just one word: Freiheit! Then he is gone. In that instant, the word "freedom", so much devalued and abused, recovers all its pristine, primal force.
That is the moment. That is the image. It's the late 20th century version of the prisoners' chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio; of Delacroix's painting of Liberté, her right breast boldly bared, leading the people in the French revolution.
The first frontier crossing to be opened was at Bornholmerstrasse, on a bridge that goes over the S-Bahn, the overground city railway. My friend Werner Krätschell, a pastor of the East German protestant church which did much to shelter the East German opposition, was among the early ones to come across. It was soon after 11pm. The frontier guards put a stamp in his ID card, across his photograph. He checked with them that he could come back.
No, they replied, that stamp means you are emigrating permanently. He had left two young children at home, so he tried to turn round his car, to go back. But just as he was trying to turn round, in the narrow frontier crossing leading on to the bridge, a frontier soldier came running up and shouted to his colleague: "Comrade, a new order! They can come back." So Werner drove on into the west. A few minutes later, about 11.30pm, the guards opened the barriers and just let everyone through.
The other day, Werner rummaged around in his cellar to find his old ID card, and showed me the stamp across the photo: 9.11.O>23 – that is, at or after 2300 hrs. If you had to point to a single place and moment when the Berlin Wall was truly breached, it would be Bornholmerstrasse shortly after 11pm. As Werner turned his steering wheel, world history turned. I will be celebrating with him in Berlin this evening.
Later that night, a young East German scientist called Angela Merkel walked across the same crossing. Now the chancellor of united Germany, she will do the same again this afternoon, accompanied by a group of East German opposition activists, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech....
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| Full List of Eastern Europe articles |
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 Swissed-off: Outrage as 'Minaret ban' scandal flares up
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NEWS SUMMARY
A lesson from Latvia on how to break through the glass ceiling
Djokovic puts Serbia in control
What Father Ted could teach Radovan Karadzic
Karadzic reawakens ghosts of the past
Montenegrin 'war criminal' held
Karadzic denies war crimes 'myths'
Karadzic's 'holy war' | Marcus Tanner
Karadzic: Serbs tried to avoid war
Video: Radovan Karadzic denies war crimes at trial
Ex-Bosnian president held in UK
Karadzic claims massacre of Muslims 'just, holy'
Key excerpts: Karadzic opening statement
Trial to resume for 'Butcher of Bosnia'
Radovan Karadzic to testify at genocide trial
Karadzic to open defence at trial
Hungary frees two held over fraud
Bosnian Serb in war crimes trial
Do we need immigrants to do our dirty work?
SNCF sorry for alert on Romanians
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