Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

I am not going to spell out who to the right hon. Gentleman, because I should like him now to keep for ever in his mind the paranoia about who has been plotting against him. The High Representative will, however, have some serious work to do, and the Foreign Secretary mentioned some of the foreign policy areas on which Europe needs to work together. One is very much Bosnia, and he knows that I have mentioned the political crisis in Bosnia on many occasions in the past three years. I welcome his personal attention to the very concerning situation in that country; I very much welcome the extension of EUFOR's mandate and its United Nations charter chapter VII authority, and I hope that the mandates of the international judges and prosecutors working in the state court will also be extended before their mandate expires on 15 December. The recent communiqué on Bosnia sought to highlight the positive wherever possible, but the fact remains that the country is on a downward trend; that its future is under direct challenge from some political leaders, who deliberately block the work of joint state and entity institutions; and that the future of the Office of the High Representative and the international presence has become a pawn in the hands of some local politicians. However, I put it to the Foreign Secretary that offering the bait of eventual EU membership might not be enough to resolve the immediate crisis. Given that, for example, the Prime Minister of the entity of Republic Srpska openly and repeatedly asserts the autonomy of that entity as a more important goal than joining the EU, does the Foreign Secretary believe that the distant prospect of EU membership is enough to make the political leaders in the country approach talks in a more constructive manner? I hope that he agrees that if no progress is made, the time will soon come for the EU to reinforce its message to Bosnian leaders, with the threat of sanctions against individuals who are deliberately blocking reforms. I also welcome Serbia's continued commitment to joining the EU; we understand that Belgrade plans to apply for EU membership before the end of the year. However, a major block remains to Serbia's EU aspirations: the arrest and actual transfer of the two remaining alleged war criminals to The Hague. Will Ministers clarify what the Government's assessment is today of Serbia's co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia? Can they assure the House that Her Majesty's Government's policy remains that ratification of Serbia's stabilisation and association agreement with the EU is contingent on full co-operation with the International Court of Justice, and that that continues to mean the arrest and transfer of those two remaining indictees?