Important to change stereotypes and misconceptions, says president

Date: 17/06/04

By David Cronin

THE president of Croatia's parliament has sounded a defiant note on the sensitive question of cooperation with The Hague-based war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, just days before the country is expected to be formally recognized as a candidate for joining the Union.

The UK and the Netherlands had been hostile to Croatia's EU membership ambitions, due to their belief that the Zagreb authorities were dithering concerning extraditing suspects to the tribunal. Yet their concerns have been assuaged by assurances from chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte that Croatia in recent months had stepped up its cooperation.

Nevertheless, Vladimir Seks this week queried the basis of indictments issued against Croatian nationalists.

“Some of these people are perceived as war heroes,” he told European Voice. “And it is also difficult for me to accept some of the theses behind the indictments, where ethnic cleansing is described by The Hague as the primary goal of military operations.”

Along with late president Franjo Tudjman, Seks was a founding member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in 1989.

Now the ruling party, the HDZ has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, with premier Ivo Sanader eager to display its credentials as a moderate conservative force, thereby shedding its reputation of being xenophobic.

Seks said he accepted that Croatia's routing of Serbs from the Krajina region in the 1990s involved crimes and that Croatians who perpetrated them ought to be brought to justice. The offences included the burning of villages and slaughter of civilians.

“These acts cast a very ugly shadow over the final acts of liberation,” he commented, referring to what Croatians call the Homeland War for independence.

But even though Tudjman had close links to some of the generals accused of the crimes, Seks is not ashamed of the legacy of his former leader, who died in 1999. “At the beginning of the 1990s, he was the only man who managed to mobilize an efficient political organization. I know that some things could have been done differently, however.”

A strident advocate of joining the EU, Seks indicated that one of the big challenges of cementing Croatia's rapprochement with the West would be to shake off the perception that its independence ambitions were instrumental in causing bloodshed throughout the Balkans during the 1990s. “It's important to change certain perceptions and stereotypes about Croatia.”

Seks also argued that resolution of the country's sea border dispute with neighbouring Slovenia should not be made a precondition of EU entry. The spat over fishing rights in Piran Bay, he contended, should cease once the Union's Common Fisheries Policy applies to both states.

Just ten days before Croatia was expected to be formally recognised as a candidate for European Union membership, the country's Vice-President, Vladimir Seks, queried the basis of indictments issued against Croatian nationalists by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Mr Seks also argued that the resolution of Croatia's sea border dispute with Slovenia should not be made a precondition of EU membership.

• Primary Source

http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/croatia/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/croatia/index_en.htm

http://www.un.org/icty/ http://www.un.org/icty/

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