Question of the Week: Given your insistence that Gotovina is no longer on Croatian territory, do you regard the EU’s demands to apprehend him as unrealistic?

Date: 09/12/04

CROATIA'S chances of being given a date for starting EU accession talks at next week's Brussels summit are in doubt because of allegations that it is dragging its heels in handing over Ante Gotovina to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Hido Biscevic is Croatia's deputy foreign minister.

We asked him: Given your insistence that Gotovina is no longer on Croatian territory, do you regard the EU's demands to apprehend him as unrealistic?

Biscevic: I wouldn't want to speculate on the motivation of the European Union but I would ask: why is Croatia being confronted with a 'Mission Impossible'?

I personally believe the last place Gotovina would want to be is Croatia. His family has been investigated and searched on several occasions. And the parliament has adopted a law allowing for the freezing of Gotovina's assets and those of his network of supporters.

When the current government entered into office, there were ten [war crimes] allegations against Croatians. Since then, we have had the voluntary surrender of nine generals to The Hague tribunal in less than a year.

I can assure you this was not an easy task as all nine were treated by the public and many in political life as people who had made a valuable contribution to the liberation war.

We have distributed documents to all European Union member states, firmly indicating that this government is sparing no efforts in its cooperation with The Hague tribunal, including in the case of Gotovina.

Question answered by Hido Biscevic, Croatia's deputy foreign minister. Given your insistence that [Ante] Gotovina is no longer on Croatian territory, do you regard the EU's demands apprehend him [and hand him over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] as unrealistic?