Posted on 09/07/2006 2:30:03 AM PDT by kronos77
BELGRADE -- Judy Butt of the Security Research Institute says Serbia’s desire to hold on to Kosovo may hamper its bid to join the EU.
Judy Butt said in Belgrade that the Serb attempt to keep Kosovo within Serbia may complicate the process of joining the European integrations, but that Brussels never set giving up Kosovo as a precondition for an accelerated accession.
“Serbia needs to deal seriously with the task of becoming a functional state that will accelerate its own integration with Europe. Serbia needs to ask itself will holding on to Kosovo speed up that process. It will in fact largely complicate the integration process”, she said.
Judy Butt said Belgrade made a mistake attempting to blow the Ahtisaari statement about the collective guilt of the Serbian nation out of proportion, to the level of a significant issue, and added that it was about taking responsibility for some past actions, as well as that some other European countries have undergone a similar process.
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Out of the 25 member-states, not one had to give up ~15% of its territory in order to join the bloc. Why should Serbia do so?
The list of demands put in front of Serbia is endless. What I don't understand is, why join the EU in the first place?!? Serbia should focus on attracting FDI and making some use of its skilled and educated labour, as well as her fantastic geogr. location. The EU will come knocking in no time and, if we have any brain cells, we'll tell them to sod off.
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