THE UN/THE BALKANS: Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia-Montenegro made last-minute bids to improve their standing with the UN war crimes tribunal yesterday, ahead of a potentially ruinous report from the court's chief prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, reports Daniel McLaughlin in Budapest
Ms del Ponte is expected to lambast the former Yugoslav states today, and accuse them of doing little or nothing to catch prominent war crimes suspects like Mr Radovan Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic.
Her dossier could hamper Croatia's bid to start accession talks with the European Union next year, and scuttle Bosnia and Serbia-Montenegro's hopes of joining the Partnership for Peace programme, a step on the road towards NATO membership.
"We have no dilemma about the co-operation," Croatia's foreign minister Mr Miomir Zuzul said in Brussels. "There is only one model and that is 100 per cent co-operation."
He said Zagreb expected another salvo of "sharp language" from Ms del Ponte over its failure to catch Gen Ante Gotovina, who disappeared after being indicted for wartime atrocities and whom the government insists is no longer on Croatian soil.
She dismisses the claim, saying that Gen Gotovina was spotted at a Croatian holiday resort last summer, but politicians or the security forces refused to seize him.
Ms del Ponte has reserved her fiercest diatribes for Bosnia's Serb leaders and Serbia itself, however, and has clashed with Belgrade's nationalist prime minister, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, over his open refusal to capture war crimes suspects.
He met the Bosnian Serb president, Mr Dragan Cavic, yesterday, amid warnings from the US and EU that they face international isolation unless they toe the UN's line.
Mr Cavic urged Mr Kostunica to catch and extradite several Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects who are believed to be hiding in Serbia. "We are demanding that, if we cannot do it, Serbia-Montenegro acts in accordance with the international rules and performs the extradition," he said.
There was no response from Mr Kostunica, who says the arrest of war crimes suspects could destabilise the nation. But his pro-Western foe, President Boris Tadic, insisted that "full co-operation with The Hague tribunal is in the national interest".
In Kosovo, thousands of ethnic Albanians protested against the trial in The Hague of three former guerrillas, who allegedly tortured and killed Serb civilians during fighting with Belgrade's security forces in 1998-9.