THE HAGUE, 09/01/08 - Slovenia, which holds the EU presidency, is sticking to the signing of an EU accord with Serbia. This is against the wishes of the Netherlands, which will continue to object.

Slovenia, which has held the EU presidency since 1 January, announced yesterday it wants to go ahead with the signing of the so-called stabilisation and association agreement (SAO), on 28 January. "Some of our colleagues still have to be convinced that this is a good idea," acknowledged Slovenian Foreign Minister Dmitrij Rupel in a reference to the Netherlands' opposition.

Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has opposed the signing to date and repeated his objections yesterday. He only wants to sign when Serbia cooperates fully with the UN Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia among other conditions. This means that the former Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic must be extradited to the tribunal.

The SAO is a step towards negotiations on EU membership. As well as the Netherlands, Belgium is also demanding that the SAO should only be signed when Mladic has been arrested.

Mladic is suspected of having organised the genocide in 1995 of some 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. Dutch UN troops were unable to prevent this mass slaughter.