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Gotovina – Obstacle to Croatia Joining in EU

The European Union has once again turned down Croatia's attempt to start accession talks. All criteria have been fulfilled except one -- the handover of a top Croatian army general, Ante Gotovina, to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. General Gotovina has been indicted for alleged offenses against Serbs in 1995. The hunt for the general has attracted the secret services of the great and less great powers to Zagreb. But the Croatian government say they don't know where he is. Nick Thorpe has been trying to unravel this Balkan spy story.

Franjo Turek suggests we meet in the Dubrovnik café in central Zagreb. He's sitting in the corner by the window when I arrive -- looking younger, but more haunted than I had expected. 9 years as a secret policeman, then 4 as director of the Croatian Counter Intelligence Agency, the POA, have left their mark on him.

The café is pleasantly full, but a man in glasses and a striped shirt finds a table right next to ours. It comes as a shock, but not necessarily a surprise, to see that he has a small microphone pointed straight at us.

“One of yours? “ asks Turek, nodding towards the man. “No one works for me…” I protest, ”isn't he one of yours?” Turek looks the man up and down. I used to have a staff of 700, he jokes. I didn't meet all of them. After a while, stripy shirt leaves and another man takes his place, at another table nearby.

Franjo Turek ran the POA from February 2000, to March 2004. Since he retired, articles have appeared in the Croatian and foreign press, accusing him of helping General Gotovina's network, rather than uncovering it.

Gotovina was in charge of the troops who carried out a blitzkrieg operation to liberate the Krajina region from Serb control in August 1995. In 2001, he was indicted by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes allegedly carried out by Croatian forces -- the burning and looting of Serb homes, and the death of at least 150, mostly elderly and defenceless Serb civilians.

Tipped off about his indictment, he disappeared. In a 2003 interview from his hideaway, published in Croatia, Gotovina denied responsibility for any crimes, and said he would gladly give evidence to the Hague tribunal. But as a free man, not a suspected criminal.

In the last 16 months, 8 Croats have surrendered voluntarily to the Hague. Documents, mostly those gathered by the POA, and many relating to the

Gotovina case, have been handed over. 'We have contact with the Tribunal Prosecutors office almost every day' says an exasperated Minister of Justice, Vesna Skare Ozbolt. But depite this, influential EU states led by Britain still oppose the start of Croatia's accession talks with the European Union.

The authorities in Zagreb say they know how Gotovina left the country. They know something about the foreign support network which keeps him going. They have re-shuffled the secret services, and sacked at least one senior police officer. But the bird, they say, has definitely flown. The Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal, Carla del Ponte, who has her own investigators in the Balkans claims he is still in Croatia or Bosnia.