The Dutch government has lifted its reservations to the EU starting negotiations with Croatia on a crucial area of membership talks, after authorities in Zagreb set up a taskforce to find documents needed for the UN's prosecution of Croatian generals indicted for war crimes.

The UK, Denmark, Finland and Belgium dropped similar reservations earlier this month, leaving the Netherlands the last EU member state to block chapter 23 of the accession negotiations, on the judiciary and fundamental rights,

Chapter 23 had been blocked because a United Nations war-crimes court in The Hague was unhappy with the co-operation forthcoming from Zagreb.