Ashton Mulls Serbia-Kosovo Role

It's now six months since top officials from Serbia and the former breakaway province of Kosovo have sat down for talks brokered by the European Union, and the momentum of the 18-month old negotiations has dropped almost to zero.

Since the two sides last met at senior level, there has been constant finger-pointing over failure to implement already-reached deals, Serbia has a new, nationalist-leaning prime minister and president, and Kosovar authorities are threatening to close down services run locally by Serbs in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo.

EU officials have made it clear that talks about Serbia's accession to the EU can only start if there is progress in the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue.

Cometh the moment, cometh the woman. EU officials say the region's foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, is eyeing a more hands-on role in the talks in an effort to re-inject some energy.

In the first rounds of top-level talks, which started in March 2011, negotiations were chaired by Robert Cooper, one of the EU's most experienced diplomats. (Mr. Cooper's last involvement was to fly to Belgrade on June 19/20 at the request of Serbia's new president Tomislav Nikolic to clarify the details of the accords the two sides have reached thus far.)

But with Mr. Cooper now in semi-retirement-he's expected to stay on as the EU's point person for Myanmar/Burma-Lady Ashton is considering stepping into the role. But officials say she first wants to see if Serbia's new government is willing to play ball.

A key test of that will come next Tuesday when Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic makes his first trip to Brussels. One EU official calls this "kick-off time" for the new Serbian authorities.

Mr. Dacic has won credits in Brussels in the past. He was interior minister when Serbian authorities finally swooped in May 2011 to arrest former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic.

Still, many in Brussels had hoped ex-President Boris Tadic, a strong proponent of EU membership and Mr. Nikolic's opponent in May's elections, would end up as prime minister rather than Mr. Dacic, head of the Socialist party of Serbia and an ex-spokesman for Slobodan Milosevic.

Brussels officials say that Messers Nikolic and Dacic have said the right things in public about the EU-that they are committed to the accession talks.

But they remain guarded about Serbia's new power duo, worried by the kindling of ties with Moscow and the mixed messages they've sent on regional cooperation. There's also concern that, with Serbia preoccupied by economic problems, the new government won't want to spend political capital on the Kosovo dialogue.

"It's still too early to say where they are... We hear different remarks to different people," said one EU official.

For Brussels, the key focus Tuesday will be whether Mr. Dacic commits to fully implement the seven accords Belgrade has signed with Pristina. Some of these have gone smoothly: agreements on recognizing custom stamps and university diplomas and matching up civil registry data are progressing well.

Others remain problematic, including a torturous agreement on how Kosovo should be officially referred to in meetings involving both Belgrade and Pristina. Both sides have pulled their teams out of meetings because they were unhappy with the arrangement.

And there's one issue Belgrade has been delaying on for months - signing a technical protocol on jointly managing their borders. The protocol is sensitive for Belgrade which doesn't want to be seen in any way recognizing Kosovo's status as an independent country.

Yet the previous government committed to the implement the joint border management proposal in February-a concession that was key in persuading the EU to give Serbia EU candidate status the following month.

Over the summer, the EU were happy to wait for the Nikolic team to bed in and for him to pick a new government before they raised the pressure. Now EU officials say it's time for Belgrade to signal its real intent to Brussels by pledging to sign the protocol.