Word: membership
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...indeed a great day for Serbia. This day represents a crossroads," Tadic said. "Today we are entering a stage which is very difficult, which demands deep and painful reforms." Swedish Prime Minster Fredrik Reinfeldt described the move as "a new beginning for Serbia," but warned, "the road to membership is long and demanding." (See pictures of riots in Belgrade...
...early 1990s - a move that some low-cost airlines had already anticipated by adding Belgrade and other airports to their routes. It also follows the E.U.'s decision earlier this month to unfreeze an interim trade and cooperation pact with Serbia - seen as a precursor to eventual E.U. membership...
...expecting any swift E.U. accession. Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav republic that has managed to join the bloc; Serbia now joins Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey and Iceland in an ever-lengthening line of aspiring candidates. Almost all of the other applicants are further along the path to membership. And within the E.U., there is growing resistance toward adding new members, a sentiment known as "enlargement fatigue" following the recent accession of a dozen mainly eastern European countries...
...biggest obstacle to Serbia's membership is the past -specifically Belgrade's inability to face up to the baleful legacy of the Balkan wars. The E.U. has made the capture of war fugitives Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic a precondition to even starting membership negotiations. The two men are believed to be hiding in the Serbian mountains under the tacit protection of key politicians. The Netherlands is particularly keen to see the arrest of Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on genocide charges for his alleged role in the slaughter...
...Another barrier to membership is Serbia's continuing belligerence toward Kosovo, where about 10,000 people were killed and 850,000 driven from their homes during the war. Although NATO ousted Belgrade's tanks from the territory in 1999, Serbia still refuses to accept the loss of its province. Indeed, Serbia's condemnation of Kosovo's declaration of independence last year even raised concerns about a possible new military intervention. "Serbia still needs to come to terms with the war crimes of the 1990s and go through the painful but essential process of breaking from the stranglehold of the nationalist...