EU-Serbian Relations

"On the basis of very careful and extensive assessment, the Commission can resume the negotiations on a Stabilization and Association Agreement," Rehn said after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Serbian President Boris Tadic in the German capital, Berlin.

Merkel, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said the partnership negotiations "will be resumed soon."

A European Commission statement said: "The pace of negotiations…will depend on Serbia's continued effective cooperation."

The comments come after a Bosnian Serb general accused of genocide during the Bosnia war from 1992-95 Bosnia was delivered to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Arrest at the border

Zdravko Tolimir was arrested on the border between Serbia and Bosnia's Serb Republic in a joint operation by NATO and the EU peacekeeping force EUFOR on Thursday. On Friday, he was flown to the Netherlands from the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

Rehn said partnerships talks were likely this month, with an exact date for talks to be set after Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), returns from Belgrade, where she is scheduled to travel on Monday.

Del Ponte's spokeswoman said the prosecutor would meet the Serbian president and the prime minister and would provide the EU and the UN Security Council with a full report on her trip.

War criminal-tracking a condition

The EU froze the so-called "Stabilization and Association Agreement" negotiations with Serbia on joining the bloc because the Balkan state was not fully cooperating with the war crimes tribunal.

This was mainly due to Belgrade's failure to hand over suspects like former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, whom experts say is still hiding in Serbia.

During the Bosnia war, Tolimir was a close aide of Mladic's.

Tolimir, a former general, is alleged to have helped Mladic plan and execute the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, an event which UN courts have classed as genocide.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, and three other suspects charged with war crimes by the UN tribunal also remain at large.

Political motivation

The EU's decision to resume talks is seen as a political sweetener to help Belgrade swallow the bitter pill of the United Nations granting "supervised independence" to the ethnic Albanian majority province of Kosovo.

Serbia deeply opposes losing Kosovo and its ally Russia has threatened to use its UN Security Council veto to stop that happening, but Belgrade wants to reap the benefits of joining Europe's rich club.

Merkel confirmed that deep divisions remained between the Serbian government and the EU about the future status of Kosovo.

"There are still clear divisions about Kosovo," she said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic said Belgrade insisted that granting independence to Kosovo was "completely unacceptable."

He added, however, that "there is still a lot of room to maneuver in negotiations in the hope of finding a compromise."