Paris, 14 June, 2005 – Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said on Tuesday that Croatia should step up its efforts to find fugitive war criminal General Ante Gotovina and strengthen cooperation with foreign intelligence services. 
 
Addressing the Assembly, he insisted that Gotovina was not in the country and that the government was doing all it could to find him. “Our cooperation is complete – we have followed up all leads and have tried to find information” contributing to his arrest. Answering questions about whether Gotovina’s absence was blocking the way to Croatia’s accession to the EU, he said at a press conference: “We are hostage to one person (at a time when) we have to convince the International Tribunal (for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague) and the international community that we will respect all our commitments (on bringing war criminals to trial). Why would we want to protect one person? What would be the logic?” He added that Croatia needed to step up efforts to find Gotovina, including through closer links with foreign intelligence services.
 
President Mesic acknowledged that Croatia had had problems in cooperating with the tribunal up until 2000, because public opinion considered victims could not be criminals. But now “we recognise that Croatians have committed crimes as well”. “Individuals who have given money to criminals, have hidden them or given them false identities are being prosecuted”, he said. “Verdicts are expected.” He stressed that Croatia was governed by the rule of law and upheld the principle of individual guilt for war crimes. “We are bringing collective culpability to an end, (which) is in the national interest.”
 
Asked about the rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty by France and The Netherlands, he said the “no” vote should not halt moves to expand the European Union (EU) “I don’t believe it will stop the process (even though) it will not accelerate it,” he said. “The process cannot stop (partly because south-east European countries) have no other options or ways” forward. “We cannot join the United States of America, and cannot remain isolated or marginalised” from the rest of Europe, he said. Stressing that Europe should “be united in diversity,” he said that all minorities should be protected by the same democratic standards that existed in member states. In a unified Europe, “frontiers will be open and we will all become national minorities, since no nation will have a majority”.
 
As for Croatian refugees, he said the government was trying to boost economic growth so that the refugees could return to jobs and contribute to society rather than live on aid.
 
Responding to a question on the future status of Kosovo, President Mesic noted that the Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, had said that Kosovo should be “more than autonomous, but less than independent” but had not said what that meant. President Mesic felt that the problems facing the region, with which “history has dealt very harshly”, could only be resolved by negotiation. He noted that at the time when President Tito held power in former Yugoslavia, Albanians had gained substantial minority rights, including the right to their own schools and a seat on the country’s presidential board. Ex-President Slobodan Milosevic had destroyed those rights, tried to turn Albanians into pariahs and drive them out of Kosovo, with the aim of destabilising Albania and Macedonia.
 
Turning to the country’s dispute with Slovenia over territorial waters, President Mesic said if negotiations failed, Croatia would abide by an arbitrator’s decision. He also told the Assembly that Croatia now meets all the criteria to join NATO, except for stocks of military equipment. It was “just a question of finance” to replace weapons lost during the unrest in the Balkans, which were anyway “of eastern origin”.