War Crimes still an issue in the Balkans

Written by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and published in The Guardian on Fri 11th Mar 2005

Dear Sir, In its insistence that the EU cannot open accession talks with Croatia while that country refuses to hand General Gotovina over to the Hague war crimes tribunal, the UK government is entirely right. I congratulate Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane for his consistent firmness on the matter and his challenging of the Croat delusion that war crimes cannot have been committed in the course of a defensive patriotic war.

It is simply impossible to be convinced that the Croatian authorities are doing all they can to find Gotovina when they have enough traceable links to him through paying a pension!

It is disgraceful that other EU countries like Austria want to let Zagreb off the hook. This would set a terrible precedent for Serbia, which is starting to cooperate with the Hague but knows it must deliver General Mladic and Radovan Karadic before it can make real European progress. And it would completely undermine the efforts to make Kosovar Albanians understand that independence depends on the ability to guarantee protection of Kosovan Serbs.

[This paragraph was not published by the Guardian] The tragedy is that the moral and political standing of the UK (and US) governments on the subject of the rule of law is diminished by the invasion of Iraq, abuses of Iraqi prisoners, Guantanamo Bay, and ECHR-derogating internment without trial. I'm sure Denis is well aware of that.

Yours sincerely,

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP