EP - MEPs oppose Council decision not to open negotiations with Croatia

Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday contested the Council's decision not to open accession negotiations with Croatia yet. In a letter MEPs are proposing that a committee be set up to monitor whether or not Croatia is cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague but that in the meantime negotiations should start. Should this committee find that Croatia is indeed not fully cooperating, then negotiations should be halted. Earlier today, the Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers was unable to reach a joint agreement that Croatia was fully cooperating with the Tribunal, which is one of the conditions for opening negotiations.

Croatian Prime Minister Ivo SANADER told MEPs that he was quite happy to accept a monitoring committee, something he had already proposed himself. He said he was very disappointed by the Council's decision and denied that his government was not fully cooperating. Mr Sanader stressed that his government genuinely had no information on the whereabouts of former general Ante Gotovina, whose hand-over has been requested by the ICTY. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, has accused Croatia of not doing enough to secure his arrest. Mr Sanader said he had asked the EU Member States to share any information they might have on the fugitive general but that none had been forthcoming. He pointed out that over the past year nine generals had been indicted and handed over to the ICTY and that a day earlier a tenth general had been indicted.

Asked at a press conference after his meeting with the Foreign Affairs Committee why Croatia had only very recently frozen Gotovina's assets, Mr Sanader said that his government had only two months before adopted the European legislation which made this possible.

Parliament's rapporteur on Croatia, Hannes SWOBODA (PES, AT), proposed that negotiations be started as quickly as possible while a monitoring committee is set up to evaluate Croatia's cooperation with the ICTY. He was supported by almost all other MEPs. Joost LAGENDIJK (Greens/EFA, NL) disagreed, saying that he was more willing to believe Carla del Ponte than the Croatian government

16.03.2005 Committee on Foreign Affairs
In the chair: Elmar BROK (EPP-ED, DE)

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