BELGRADE (AFP)--Serbian leaders will press the European Union to hasten the country's integration into the bloc, President Boris Tadic said Tuesday on the eve of their first visit to Brussels after Radovan Karadzic's arrest. 

"It is very important that...we go to Brussels and dissect what has been done and what should be done...making a roadmap on how Serbia can become an E.U. member as soon as possible," Tadic said in an interview broadcast by B92 television. 

"We cannot do without Europe and therefore all processes should be speeded up, including the implementation of the trade agreement," he said in reference to an accord on closer ties signed with the E.U. in April. 

Along with Tadic, the delegation traveling to Brussels on Wednesday includes Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic and the deputy prime minister for E.U. integration, Bozidar Djelic. 

It is the highest-ranking Serbian delegation to go to Brussels in recent years, and the first such trip there since a new West-leaning government came to power in Belgrade on July 7. 

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

So far, it has only signed the E.U.'s Stabilization and Association Agreement, seen as a first step on the long road to membership. 

"Our delegation's main argument (for faster E.U. integration) will certainly be the arrest of Radovan Karadzic," a Serbian source was quoted as telling the daily Blic on Tuesday. 

Tadic alluded to this, saying that Serbia could no longer come in for criticism that it was stalling on cooperation with the U.N. court after having transferred Karadzic to The Hague.