Marta Kos cancels visit to Serbia over honoring Ratko Mladic
In Serbia, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos cancelled a planned visit because of the glorification of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic following his death. She said this was incompatible with the values on which the country’s path to the European Union is based.
Marta Kos’s decision
In a post on X on Friday, Kos condemned the “glorification around his death” and said that under these circumstances she had decided not to make the planned visit to Serbia. This was reported by Al Jazeera English.
Mladic’s body was transported from The Hague to Belgrade, where it was received by a guard of honor on Thursday. According to the Serbian government, the burial will be held with state and military honors.
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Reaction in Serbia
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, quoted by regional television channel N1, called Kos’s explanation brief and stupid. He also said that the government would provide all necessary logistical and transport support and expected tens of thousands of people at the funeral.
Ratko Mladic died on August 27 at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in The Hague. In 2017, a UN court found him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during the war in Bosnia. In July 1995, his forces killed more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys during the Srebrenica genocide. Serbia has been negotiating EU accession since 2014, but the process has stalled in recent years.
