(BELGRADE) - Serbia's parliament on Tuesday ratified a key accord marking the first step towards membership in the European Union.

Deputies voted by 139 votes to 26 to ratify the EU's Stabilisation and Association Agreement, parliament speaker Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic announced.

Belgrade and Brussels signed the rapprochement accord only days before May 11 elections in Serbia, bolstering pro-EU forces in the country.

Members of the ultranationalist opposition Serbian Radical party (SRS) were not present at the vote, along with a group of its former deputies who on Monday formed its own assembly faction, led by former SRS leader Tomislav Nikolic.

The SRS is the strongest single force in the Serbian parliament with 78 out of 250 seats.

Nikolic resigned over a disagreement within the party on support for Serbia's rapprochement with the EU.

The Serbian government hopes to get EU candidacy by early next year and to win full membership by 2014.

Last week, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that Serbia could become an EU candidate nation next year but must first meet conditions including full cooperation with the UN war crimes court.

The key condition set by the international community is the arrest of the last two remaining fugitives, former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.

Mladic -- along with the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, arrested in Belgrade in July -- has been charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.

Text and Picture Copyright 2008 AFP. All other Copyright 2008 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.