EU opens membership talks with Croatia

The European Union opened membership talks with Croatia after the United Nations war crimes tribunal’s chief prosecutor said the government in Zagreb was now co-operating fully with efforts to bring a suspect to trial.

The EU froze talks with Croatia that were to start in March over its failure to co-operate with the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, which indicted former Croat general Ante Gotovina for wartime atrocities against Serbs.

EU foreign ministers said in a statement that the talks could open now that “Croatia had met the outstanding condition for the start of accession negotiations”.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country now holds the EU presidency, presided at a brief ceremony in Luxembourg last night, formally opening the talks that was also attended by Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader. Croatian officials said they hoped their country could join the EU in 2009.

Earlier, prosecutor Carla Del Ponte delivered an upbeat assessment on Croatia to a special EU task force in charge of reviewing Croatia’s co-operation with the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Gotovina has been on the run since his indictment in mid-2001.

Straw said the decision to freeze the talks was a tough one for the EU, especially since the bloc is keen on pushing stability in the Balkans by offering nations there the hope of joining the club.

“It has been difficult for Croatia, and it has been difficult for the EU,” he said.

Britain, Germany and the Netherlands were the toughest in calling on Croatia to fully co-operate with the tribunal.

Austria, one of Croatia’s neighbours, had pushed hard for the EU to restart the talks, arguing it was unfair that it be penalised. It had linked Croatia’s membership bid to its opposition to starting EU entry talks with Turkey.

Del Ponte said yesterday that Zagreb was co-operating fully to try to capture Gotovina and hand him over.

“Yes, it is the first time we are saying it’s full co-operation,” Del Ponte said. “I can say that for a few weeks now, Croatia has been co-operating fully with us and is doing everything it can to locate and arrest Ante Gotovina.

“If Croatia continues to work with the same resolve and intensity, I am confident that he can be transferred to The Hague soon.”

Sanader met separately with EU officials yesterday.

EU officials expressed some concern that a decision to restart talks could have a negative impact on Croatia’s co-operation with the tribunal by taking some of the pressure off Zagreb.

Sanader told Croatian television that “despite the positive assessment, it remains not only our international obligation but also our domestic obligation” to hunt down Gotovina.

Del Ponte said her assessment was “based on over 130 reports that my office received this year from the Croatian agencies involved in the tracking of Ante Gotovina, on the nearly daily communications between my office and the Croatian state attorney Mladen Bajic and on other contacts with Croatian and international sources”.

Her report said that in the first half of this year, “serious weaknesses were found in the functioning of Croatian intelligence services”. But Del Ponte said that since May, “performance of the relevant services has significantly improved”.

She said that “according to sources outside of the Croatian government, Gotovina is in Croatia or in Bosnia-Herzegovina and there are indications that he may hide in a Franciscan monastery”.

Sanader insists Gotovina fled the country long ago.