European Union nations have signed a pre-membership trade-and-aid pact with Serbia, signalling readiness to bring Serbia closer to the EU despite significant differences over Kosovo.
EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg, said, however, the EU will only implement the pre-membership deal once Belgrade fully co-operates with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which has demanded the extradition of the last remaining war crimes suspects. Serbian President Boris Tadic said he hoped everything would be in place for his country to become an official EU candidate nation by the end of the year, but EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said there still remained several "conditions" to be fulfilled before then.
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