Sanader Isolated As EU Dream Crumbles

Croatia's centre-right government fears the country will be destabilised by the likely postponement of talks on accession to the European Union, as a result of disagreements over the Hague war crimes tribunal.

Talks should have started on March 17 but have been put off owing to the negative assessment of Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal by its chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte.

The main sticking point concerns the fate of General Ante Gotovina, Croatia's most important indictee, who remains out of reach of Hague prosecutors.

While Zagreb insists it does not know of his whereabouts, Del Ponte has claimed Gotovina is within reach of the Croatian authorities.

The embassies of Britain and the Netherlands, the two EU countries seen as most opposed to Croatia's EU accession, have already reported received threatening anonymous letters.

Perhaps more seriously for Ivo Sanader's government, a few days earlier, Mirko Condic, representative of one of the associations of veterans of the 1991 independence war, announced they intended to form a new political party, which will also have a military wing.

Condic cited seething discontent among Croatia's politically influential war veterans over Sanader's policy of cooperation with the Hague tribunal and his frequent statements that Croatia was willing to apprehend and hand over Gotovina.

The general – wanted for killing hundreds of Serbs in the recapture of the formerly Serb-held Krajina region - remains a popular figure.

Anti-EU and pro-Gotovina graffiti is scrawled on the walls of many cities, while fresh, jumbo-sized posters of the fugitive general pop up daily.

A survey conducted by the Zagreb daily Jutarnji list in late February of a thousand respondents said around 54.4 per cent still opposed the arrest of Gotovina and his extradition to The Hague.

More tellingly, a much larger figure of 81.4 per cent said they considered him a war hero and 84.8 per cent said they would not report him to the police if they spotted him.

Even within the ranks of Sanader's party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, there is open disunity over the subject of Gotovina and, indeed, over the EU.

At a meeting of the HDZ youth branch in Osijek on March 11, while Sanader was trying to persuade EU states to start the talks after all on March 17, Branimir Glavas, an important regional party boss, described Gotovina as a hero.

Glavas said halting talks on EU accession over the general was an excuse by Brussels and that even without Gotovina, the EU would have come up with something else. Croatia did not need such an EU, Glavas added.

A leading Catholic priest, Zlatko Sudac, has also recently called on the general not to surrender to the Hague tribunal – embarrassing the mission to Brussels of Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic, who was lobbying the European Commission chief, Jose Manuel Barroso.

Fr Sudac is widely seen as a spokesman for the large nationalist wing of the Catholic Church, which numbers several right-wing bishops in its ranks.

Political analyst Davor Gjenero predicted that the HDZ would return to its hard-line nationalist roots if the suspension of the EU accession talks dragged on.

"The HDZ will regress to what it used to be before Sanader tried to transform it into a modern European right-of-centre political party," he said.

"The party will return to its old 'core values' and again become a nationalist, populist movement," Gjenero told IWPR.

In his televised address last week, President Stjepan Mesic, sounded a dramatic warning about Croatia's possible isolation, if anti-European tendencies triumphed.

"Do not be deceived by the enemies of Europe and advocates of an isolated Croatia," he urged the public. "Resist them in the name of freedom and democracy, in the name of our future, in the name of the Croatia that we started building together - the Croatia for which the Homeland War heroes gave their lives."

Mesic added that Del Ponte had good reason to harbour some suspicions of Croatia given the earlier attitude of the authorities to the international war crimes court.

"It is a regrettable fact that in the past, when the the Hague tribunal turned to us seeking war crimes suspects, our state organs would respond that they did not have the faintest idea about their whereabouts," he said.

"Later, it would turn out that they were living in Croatia under false identities, with false names and were even receiving financial and other assistance from some institutions.

"Now we wonder why our reports on… Gotovina are not readily accepted as true. The reason for this is clear - they have lost confidence in us."

Analysts say Sanader played a risky game in making fast-track entry to the EU his trump card, while neglecting the country's growing internal problems.

The economy is in deep trouble. An already high unemployment rate of about 20 per cent is continuing to climb. Living standards have not improved, while foreign debt has skyrocketed to more than 30 billion US dollars.

Zeljko Rohatinski, governor of the National Bank, has warned that the country's unpaid bills could push the country towards the precipice.

Economic analyst Milan Gavrovic said, “Croatia finished last year with 30.2 billion dollar foreign debt. Last year alone - which was said to be the year when the increase in foreign debt began to slow down - the foreign debt burden grew by another 6 billion dollars.

"Croatia will be brought to its knees if the inflow of foreign investment dries up. And this is bound to happen if the country opts for isolation instead of meeting the prerequisites needed to start talks on EU accession.”

"Sanader has been going through his most difficult period, ever since he came to power," a source close to the prime minister told IWPR.

"If he loses the local elections in May, which polls show may well happen, he will face strong pressure from the radicals within his own party who could take over. This would be devastating in the long run as it might leave the country out in the cold, outside the European Union, for a long time."

Some observers believe these developments will have an impact far wider than Croatia. If the political right and nationalism grow in force in Croatia, they say, the echoes will be felt in neighbouring Bosnia and Hercegovina and in Serbia and Montenegro as well.

Drago Hedl is a regular IWPR contributor.