Croatia likely to re-elect Mesic in weekend poll

CROATIA: Croatia chooses a president to lead it into the European Union this weekend, in elections overshadowed by the country's continued failure to capture its most notorious war crimes suspect.

Opinion polls put the incumbent, Mr Stipe Mesic, well ahead of his only real rival, Deputy Prime Minister Ms Jadranka Kosor, as Croatia prepares for the start of EU accession talks next March.

The Balkan nation hopes to join the bloc with Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, but most analysts believe 2009 is a more realistic target.

Brussels insists, however, that Croatia's membership could founder if it fails to catch Gen Ante Gotovina and hand him to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, which indicted him in 2001 for alleged atrocities against Serbs during fighting that dismembered Yugoslavia a decade ago.

Gen David Leakey, who leads the EU's peacekeeping force in Bosnia, said yesterday that Gen Gotovina "is known both to spend time in Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina as well."

Mr Mesic (70) and other officials reject claims that Gen Gotovina is hiding in Croatia, and that he was even spotted strolling through a resort town on the country's picturesque Adriatic coast last summer.

"Croatia is the last country where Ante Gotovina would seek sanctuary, because everyone here is interested" in seeing him face charges for wartime atrocities, Mr Mesic said recently. "No one in Croatia has a reason to protect Gotovina. I believe that we will. . .either arrest [ Gotovina] or give proof that he is abroad."

Ms Kosor (51) has angered the West by referring to the fugitive general as a "hero", but accepts that he should face trial and so defuse tension between Zagreb and Brussels.

"Parts of the indictment charging him with ethnic cleansing are unacceptable to me, but he has to defend this truth before The Hague court," she said.

Ms Kosor, of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) that controls parliament, has divided Croats with her regular public appearances at charity events, hospitals and orphanages: some believe she is a genuine defender of the neglected, while others deride her for having an insatiable thirst for the limelight.

Mr Mesic, who is supported by most of the opposition parties, came to power after the death of authoritarian former president Franjo Tudjman.

He symbolised the new face of a nation rebuffed by the West in the 1990s for its nationalism and disregard for minority and human rights, and has both defended the rights of Croatia's Serb minority and apologised to Jews, Serbs and Gypsies for their mistreatment under the pro-Nazi regime that ruled Croatia during the second World War.

Analysts say both main candidates will pursue the same priorities if elected, with the key one EU entry as soon as possible.

"We have no fears for Croatia if either Mesic or Kosor wins," said one Western diplomat.