BOSNIA, SERBIA-MONT. MINISTERS FOR STRONGER REGIONAL COOPERATION

SARAJEVO, Feb 19 (Hina) - The foreign ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro said in Sarajevo on Wednesday their two countries would cooperate closely in coordinating efforts by Southeast European countries to join European integration processes as soon as possible. #L# Bosnia's Mladen Ivanic said the countries in the region must clearly show both the EU and NATO that they can cooperate and prove that this region is no longer a conflict area. His counterpart from Serbia and Montenegro, Goran Svilanovic, said his government wished to use an impending regional meeting in Belgrade to agree about and coordinate a joint approach at an EU summit in Salonika this June. Cooperation is imperative and necessary to all, regardless of the difference in the level of development of individual countries in Europe's southeast, he said. Svilanovic said he was confident that all of the region's countries would one day "once again get together within the European Union". Asked if the fact that Bosnia had sued Yugoslavia for aggression and genocide hampered regional cooperation, Svilanovic said the lawsuit was a "shadow" on mutual relations but that a solution should be sought jointly to make "this tragic...episode" a part of the past. Svilanovic said he was hopeful that all who committed war crimes, especially in Bosnia's Srebrenica and Croatia's Vukovar, would be brought to justice. The two chiefs of diplomacy confirmed their countries had been requested by the U.S. government to sign bilateral agreements which would give U.S. citizens immunity before the International Criminal Court. Ivanic said Washington expected an answer from Sarajevo by July 1 and that the continuation of U.S. assistance to Bosnia, especially on the military front, depended on it. (hina) ha sb