Belgrade / Luxembourg, 11/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - In talks in Belgrade on Tuesday with EU Council President Mr. Vedrine, the new Yugoslav President, Mr. Kostunica accepted the invitation to go to Biarritz on the occasion of te informal summit of the Fifteen (President Kostunica will take part in Saturday's lunch). Kostunica, who said that Yugoslavia wanted "one day to become a full member of the European Union", showed himself to be quite open to the the issue of albanian prisoners in Serbia (see what Mr. Kouchner had to say on the subject in EUROPE of 9/10 October, p.6), while stipulating that, likewise, the problem off the Serbs disappeared in Kosovo also had to be dealt with.
Having met the Serb Patriarch Pavle and Cardinal Schroborn (who was the host of the meeting) in Vienna on Wednesday, European Commission President Romano Prodi said that Europe "cannot imagine a Serbia remaining outside our community", as Serbia "is and must be an integral part of Europe". The problems of the Yugoslav Federation can only be settled "in a perspective of internal democratisation, the development of the principles of solidarity and institutional subsidiarity, and only in a European perspective", said Prodi, who paid tribute to the role played in Serbia by the Orthodox Church, which has "constantly condemned tyranny".
As for the Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, speaking at the "Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture" in Luxembourg, welcomed the acquittal of the journalist Miroslav Filipovic (who had been sentenced to seven years in jail or "spying"). "I hope that a new era of media freedom is coming at last in Serbia", he said. Furthermore, he said that his main goal was, in close cooperation with Javier Solana, to improve the EU's ability to use its "considerable financial, commercial and political potential" to "project stability", especially in neighbourng countries.
Graham Blewitt, Deputy Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal of The Hague, said that the Tribunal for former Yugoslavia must be ready, in the case of the indictment of former President Milosevic, "to give time" to President Kkostunica. But on condition, he added, "that at the end of that period all the accused are brought before the Tribunal".