EU/Croatia: European Union foreign ministers are today to postpone the start of EU membership talks with Croatia, which were due to begin tomorrow.
The EU move is in protest against Zagreb's failure to co-operate fully with the United Nations war crimes tribunal by arresting Gen Ante Gotovina, who has been indicted for alleged war crimes.
At a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels yesterday, most member states favoured postponing the start of talks until Gen Gotovina is transferred to The Hague for trial.
Only Croatia's neighbours - Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia - were in favour of starting talks tomorrow.
Danish foreign minister Per Stig Moeller said the Croatian case set an important precedent for the EU's relationship with other Balkan countries.
"If you say it's not that important, it will be difficult to demand continued efforts to hunt down Mladic and Karadzic . . . We have to be consistent. There are a number of people who have been handed over or have surrendered. They would feel like fools," he said.
The start of accession talks requires the unanimous approval of all 25 EU member states.
Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader says that Gen Gotovina is no longer in Croatia and insists his government has been co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal. Croatia has frozen Gen Gotovina's financial assets, but the EU has made it clear that the move is not enough to prevent a postponement of membership talks.
"We are prepared to start the negotiations. Croatia is co-operating fully with the UN war crimes tribunal. But we cannot arrest Ante Gotovina. He is not in Croatia," Mr Sanader said.
Carla del Ponte, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor, has sent the EU two reports in recent weeks which are highly critical of the Croatian authorities, whom she accuses of hindering efforts to track down Gen Gotovina.
Ms del Ponte's spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, said: "There is no change in our assessment of co-operation. The authorities are not demonstrating the will to arrest Gotovina."
Gen Gotovina went on the run shortly before he was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 2001 and is believed to have been hiding in Croatia or in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Prosecutors want to put him on trial for his role in Operation Storm, a 1995 offensive during which Croatian forces recaptured the Serbian-controlled enclave of Knin. About 150 Serbian civilians were killed during the offensive and hundreds of others are still missing.
Gen Gotovina is accused of murder, plunder, deportation and persecution on political, ethnic and religious grounds.
The war crimes tribunal estimates that 280,000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Most of them have not returned to their homes.
The EU is unlikely to set a new date for the start of membership talks with Croatia, but it could reaffirm its willingness to begin talks as soon as Zagreb shows it is co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal.
Serbian foreign minister Vuk Draskovic, on a visit to Brussels, said that his country had understood the message.
"We understood very clearly that Serbia and Montenegro cannot even think about . . . approaching the European Union until transferring to The Hague all the indictees, including Gen Mladic," he said.