EU foreign ministers will not throw out the Netherlands’ objections to Serbia joining the 25-country body at their meeting end October in order to avoid an immediate conflict with new foreign minister Uri Rosenthal, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday, quoting insiders.

The paper says Belgium, which currently holds the rotating chairmanship, wants to avoid a confrontation with the Netherlands over Serbia.
The Netherlands has refused to agree to membership talks starting with Serbia until it cooperates fully with the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Earlier this week, caretaker foreign minister Maxime Verhagen told MPs that the decision to start talks with Serbia can be taken by majority decision. It would be the first time EU member states had approved admission talks without the full backing of all countries.
In particular, The Netherlands wants Serbia to arrest Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic.
Mladic is charged with masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which 7,000 men and boys under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers were murdered.