EU warns Serbia against electing nationalist government

[Ostrogorski]

BRUSSELS:

The European Union warned Serbia on Monday that it risked embarking on a "road to nowhere" if it elected a nationalist government in elections likely to take place in May. With the political crisis deepening in Belgrade, the EU sent a stark message to voters that they were at a crossroad in their relations with Europe.

"It is clear that the EU is committed to Serbia's European future and now Serbia has a crucial chance to move," said Olli Rehn, the EU's Commissioner for Enlargement. "It can either turn to a European future or turn to self-imposed isolation."

Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Rehn described the second option as "a road to nowhere."

Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, said he would like to see Serbia coming as close as possible to the EU and that he hoped "these elections will be another chance to show our proximity."

But the decision of 18 EU nations to recognize Kosovo's independence has provoked a fierce reaction in Belgrade, polarizing opinion. On Saturday, Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's nationalist prime minister, said his government could no longer function alongside the president's pro-EU Democrats because of their commitment to membership of the bloc despite its policy on Kosovo.

President Boris Tadic said that he would accept the government's proposal to dissolve Parliament and hold the early elections on May 11. He has until Thursday to make the formal announcement.

Though the EU has tried hard to encourage Serbia's aspirations to membership, two agreements between Brussels and Belgrade are on hold. The first is an interim political deal that Kostunica blocked earlier this month, which sets out a path to more favorable visa arrangements for Serbs traveling to the European Union and greater student exchanges.

The second is a stabilization and association agreement, which is seen as a stepping stone to EU membership talks, and which has been initialed but not signed. One condition for this to take place, which Serbia has not yet satisfied, is full cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal.

Serbia urges early elections

The caretaker government Monday urged the president to call early parliamentary elections in May after the cabinet collapsed because of an impasse over how Kosovo's independence affects Serbia's pursuit of EU membership, The Associated Press reported from Belgrade.

"It has been established that the government no longer has united and joint policies" over Kosovo and Serbia's EU integration, the government said in a statement Monday. "Aiming to establish the functioning of stable state institutions, we propose the dissolution of the Parliament and the holding of new elections on May 11, 2008," it added.

Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17. Kosovo had been under UN control since 1999, when NATO launched an air war to stop Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists there. But mainly Orthodox Christian Serbia, which considers the territory its historic and religious heartland, has rejected Kosovo's move as illegal under international law.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica insists that EU nations must rescind recognition of Kosovo's independence before Serbia resumes pre-membership talks with the bloc.

But President Boris Tadic opposes tying Serbia's EU membership to the Kosovo issue and says Serbia has a better chance of fighting for its territorial rights if it is not isolated.

Tadic has said that he would accept the government's proposal to dissolve Parliament and hold the early elections on May 11. He has until Thursday to make the formal announcement.

The Serbian cabinet, made up of Kostunica's conservatives and Tadic's Democrats, was formed in May following months of strained negotiations in the wake of the 2007 parliamentary vote.

Sean McCormack, State Department spokesman, said that the United States recognizes "how difficult and emotional an issue Kosovo was," but that "this is going to be an issue for the Serbians to work out. We would just suggest to them, as they work through a politically turbulent time, that they keep their focus on the future, as opposed to the past," he said Monday.

EU warns Serbia against electing nationalist government - International Herald Tribune

[Crvena zvezda]

And what do they want. That we elect the same idiots who have have barely accomplised a thing in the last 8 years. The same idiots who lick western boots only to have the west break it's promises. Unless the west changes it's polciies the west's enemies will come to power.

[Marcus Marulus]

The pesky meddlesomeness in everybody's interior affairs, by these hideous creatures commonly known as euro(c)rats, has become one of the most irritating features of the modern political discourse in Europe. They have been issuing warnings against many countries not to elect this or that political party into office for years. This meddlesome behaviour was directed not only and exclusively against Eastern European prospective members of the New Soviet Union (EU + NATO), but sometimes also against "old members" of the EU, like Italy and Austria.

Their little beaurocratized world functions only on directives and instructions for use, as if they were machines and not humans. And indeed, looking at the faces of the most outstanding and the most mediatically exposed euro(c)-rats, sometimes you get the impression that they are not humans, but robots of some sort. They are fake in every sense, totally stiff and unthinking. Everything is fake about them, even their smiles. Because it is obligatory to smile in the brave new world: that is a code for showing "optimism" and "belief in a better tomorrow". It is product of a premeditated effort to behave in accordance with the official guidelines of public behaviour and not of any genuine emotion.

[M.R.]

EU was supposed to be just some kind of economical union between western European countries, but everyone who knows in which way the wind blows knows what EU actualy is. I'm surprised though, how majority of Europeans can't see that. EU is clearly interfering into other countries' bussineses, telling them what to do, who to vote, giving them 'warnings' if they don't do what EU wants... And Serbia is not even an EU member. I hope Serbs will now finally see that they don't need EU.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by M.R.

EU was supposed to be just some kind of economical union between western European countries, but everyone who knows in which way the wind blows knows what EU actualy is.

...especially after the infamous "Lisbon treaty" has been drafted and is being progressively imposed upon all European countries, by the majority of votes in respective parliaments, without referenda or anything similar.

The fact that Europe is these days being governed by the kakistocracy of these creatures known as euro(c)rats and that most of Europe's citizens acquiesce with that testifies to a profiund spiritual decadence of this continent.

But they are likely not those who really govern, it just that they carry out instructions from higher powers.