Serbian President Boris Tadic in a file photo. The Serbian government has said it will never recognize Kosovo even if its EU entry hinges on it.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia is striving to shrug off its dark post-communist legacy and catch up with its Balkan peers on the road to European Union membership by taking a page from the book of success-story Slovakia, a senior official said.

Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic laid out a plan under which the country of 7.5 million could attract foreign investment and complete the EU accession process by 2014.

The two countries bear similarities. Slovakia did not endure the wars that shattered Yugoslavia last decade, but xenophobic governments hindered development until a center-right administration changed tack and joined the EU in 2004.

Serbia faces the additional burden of needing to arrest war crimes suspects and sort out its relationship with Kosovo, a former province that Belgrade has refused to recognize since it declared independence last year.

“Slovakia is the one country... that at one point was seemingly lagging behind its peer group,” Djelic told Reuters on Thursday night. “But through sheer political will and support from the population they were able to catch up with their neighbors and then join the EU at the same time as Poland and the Czech Republic.”

Serbia hopes UN war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz will say the country is meeting its commitments to capture fugitive general Ratko Mladic and other war criminals in his December 3 report.

It could be positive enough to allow EU ministers to give Belgrade the nod at a meeting on December 8 to apply for formal membership by the end of the year, the minister said.

“We believe that it is time for this to happen,” he said.

When asked when Serbia planned to join, Djelic noted a date floated by Greece’s prime minister, who said all of the western Balkans could join by 2014.

That is two years ahead of forecasts of economists in a Reuters poll conducted earlier this month. Croatia is expected to be the next new member, in 2012.

But issues remain. Justice reform and tackling corruption and organized crime – problems that have dogged new Balkan EU members Bulgaria and Romania since they joined in 2007.

Kosovo could complicate the EU entry process, but Djelic said Serbia would not change its stance.

“Serbia will not recognize the independence of Kosovo,” he said.

BELGRADE (AFP) – Belgrade authorities will no longer help members of the Serb minority who voted in local polls in Kosovo, which Serbia still considers as its southern province, an official said yesterday.

“Belgrade cannot and will not accept cooperation with the Serbs who have won in [Kosovo] elections,” held on November 15, State Secretary for Kosovo Oliver Ivanovic told the Beta news agency.

The withdrawal of cooperation could include Belgrade no longer financing local authorities or withdrawing grants for the Serb population.

Serbian officials had called on the estimated 120,000 Serbs remaining in the renegade territory to boycott the polls, the first held since Kosovo proclaimed independence in 2008.

Electoral officials said Serbs won mayoral posts in four municipalities in central Kosovo, where they make up the majority of the population. But due to a boycott by many Serbs in northern Kosovo, they lost control in three local councils there.

“The Serbian government has been and must be the only authority the Serbs in Kosovo trust,” Ivanovic said.