By Daria Sito-Sucic
SARAJEVO, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Inadequate prosecution of crimes relating to 1990s wars has hampered European integration of the Western Balkans, a human rights watchdog said in an annual report published on Monday.
"Everyone can agree that European integration is the goal for the Western Balkans," Benjamin Ward, the Europe and Central Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"But governments in the region need to understand that a greater commitment to human rights is an essential ingredient of those European aspirations."
The HRW report criticised the human rights situation in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia, all countries which were part of the former Yugoslavia and now aspire to join the European Union.
Of them, Croatia is closest to becoming an EU member, aiming to complete accession talks this year. Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo are still at early accession stages and are not expected to join the block for years.
All of them have to do more to improve their records in catching and trying war crimes fugitives, the report said, calling on the EU and the United States to keep up the pressure, particularly on Serbia and Kosovo.
It urged the EU justice mission EULEX in Kosovo to thoroughly investigate the allegations of war crimes by the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The report was released a day before the Council of Europe&${esc.hash}39;s parliamentary assembly votes on its own report on Kosovo that accuses KLA members loyal to Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of abductions, gun- and drug-running and trafficking in organs from some ethnic Serbs in 1999-2000. [ID:nLDE6BF23T]
The rights group has already called on the European Union to name an independent prosecutor in Kosovo to probe those allegations but the EU has said there is no need for the appointment for now. [ID:nLDE70128L]
The HRW called on Serbia, which it said has made progress in its internal war crimes cases, to arrest top fugitive Ratko Mladic, indicted by the Hague-based tribunal of Srebrenica genocide during the Bosnian war of 1992-95.
In Croatia, where the number of investigations of war crimes committed against Serbs by the Croatian Armed Forces during a 1991-95 war has increased, the report said that it was still mainly Serbs who were being tried for war crimes and expressed concerns over bias.
Judicial authorities in Bosnia, where many trials were underway both at a special war crimes chamber and in local courts, were facing impediments relating to staffing and funding, the report said. (Editing by Adam Tanner and Noah Barkin)
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