Interview with Serbian FM Vuk Jeremic

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A ruling by the World Court against the legality of Kosovo's secession from Serbia would help Belgrade's bid to join the European Union, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said on Friday.

At Serbia's request, the U.N. General Assembly has referred the issue to the Hague-based court, which will begin hearings on Dec. 1. The court can only issue an unenforceable opinion, but it could have moral and political force.

A decision is expected some time next year.

Some 60 countries, including key Western powers, have recognized mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, which declared independence last year. But the majority of the 192 U.N. member states have held back, many awaiting the court's opinion.

In an interview with Reuters, Jeremic reaffirmed Belgrade's confidence that the International Court of Justice would declare the secession illegal and said this would help Serbia's slow-moving bid to join the EU.

"I think it is going to be really helpful, because such a ruling would basically motivate the parties to come together and find a compromise solution," he said. "It would be much more difficult without such a solution -- not impossible but difficult.

"I think this is going to have an encouraging effect, this is going to have an expediting effect on our entire region's ambition to accede to the European Union."

Kosovo's independence declaration divided the EU and the U.N. Security Council, with countries that have ethnic minority problems of their own concerned it could set a precedent.

For the first time all five permanent Security Council members were due to speak at the World Court hearing, with the United States, Britain and France expected to back Kosovo independence and Russia and China to oppose it.

Serbia signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU in April 2008, but the bloc said it would release trade benefits once Bosnian Serb wartime General Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide by a U.N. war crimes court, was arrested.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said last month, however, that Serbia's EU bid could be unblocked by the end of the year if its government showed "political will" to cooperate with the U.N. tribunal.

While Jeremic called for a negotiated compromise over Kosovo, Serbian officials vow they will not recognize it.

"Serbia will never, under any circumstances, implicitly or explicitly, recognize the unilateral declaration of independence of the ethnic-Albanian authorities of our southern province," President Boris Tadic told the General Assembly on Friday.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

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