NATO Invites Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia

RIGA, Latvia (AP) - NATO leaders on Wednesday invited their old enemy Serbia - along with Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina - to join a program considered a first step toward eventual membership in the alliance.
They urged Serbia and Bosnia, however, to fully cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
The two Balkan neighbors were earlier excluded from NATO's Partnership for Peace outreach program because of their failure to apprehend the most wanted war crimes suspects indicted by the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia - former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic.
But NATO said at the end of a two-day summit that the three countries can offer a ``valuable contribution'' to stability in the Balkans, and that their membership in the program was important for the region. The program includes many former Eastern bloc countries and is considered a stepping stone toward full NATO membership.
The move to invite Serbia - strongly backed by Poland and other post-communist member states - appeared to be part of efforts to defuse the growing influence of nationalist hard-liners as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in January.
``We strongly support the ongoing reform processes and want to encourage further positive developments in the region on its path towards Euro-Atlantic integration,'' NATO said in a statement.
But Carla Del Ponte, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, said through her spokesman that she was ``surprised and disappointed'' by the decision.
``The prosecutor is highly surprised because she was not consulted,'' Anton Nikiforov told Serbia's B92 radio. ``She is disappointed because it turns out that Serbia was rewarded for its noncooperation with the (U.N. war crimes) tribunal.''
``We have to wait and see what happens next (in Belgrade),'' he later told The Associated Press. ``They will smile at us, they will laugh at us, or what?''
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the decision to invite Serbia to participate in the program was an important political move, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called it a significant step in the efforts of the Balkan countries to overcome their wartime past.
In Belgrade, Serbian President Boris Tadic hailed the invitation as ``great news,'' saying it would benefit the country's economic recovery and pave the way for a military overhaul.
Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said participation in the NATO program would also help Serbia reopen suspended pre-membership talks with the European Union.
``This is a message to all retrograde forces in Serbia that there will be no return to the past,'' he said in a reference to the wars that shook the Balkans in the aftermath of Yugoslavia's collapse in 1991.
In the first combat action in its history, NATO launched a 78-day aerial bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 to try to get autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces from the country's mainly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo.
NATO still has about 17,000 troops in the province, which has been run as a de facto U.N. protectorate since the war ended. A U.N. special envoy is expected to deliver his recommendations on the region's future early next year.
Bosnia's Defense Minister Nikola Radovanovic said he had not expected the invitation to come during the summit, adding it was the result of ``successful defense reform.''
The country emerged from the 1992-95 war with three ethnically divided armies that had fought against each other. Since 1999, authorities have worked to merge the Bosnian Serb, Bosniak and Croat forces into one and bring them under a joint command.
Three other Balkan countries - Croatia, Macedonia and Albania - already take part in the NATO program and are lined up to join the alliance. NATO said Wednesday it would invite those countries that meet alliance membership requirements to become full members at its 2008 summit.
International Herald Tribune