The European Union's new Enlargement Commissioner urged Croatia today to "do its utmost" to improve cooperation with UN war crimes prosecutors in the next two weeks to advance its EU membership bid.
The EU had planned at a summit on December 17th to give Croatia a date for starting entry talks but diplomats say the war crimes issue could put that in jeopardy, after a recent report by chief UN war crimes prosecutor Ms Carla del Ponte.
Mr Olli Rehn, who will oversee the bloc's next enlargement wave, told reporters the EU's executive Commission was disappointed at Ms del Ponte's report.
Ms Del Ponte told the Security Council this week Croatia was not cooperating fully with the UN war crimes tribunal because of its failure to arrest fugitive general Ante Gotovina, in hiding since his indictment in July 2001.
"We encourage and urge the government to do its utmost by mid-December to remedy this state of affairs and ensure full cooperation with the tribunal," Mr Rehn said.
"The critical issue is to show that the Croatian government, the administration, the whole state structure, is doing its utmost to remedy the remaining stumbling block, the case of general Gotovina," he said.
Croatia hopes to start entry talks next March and complete them in 2007, with a view to joining in 2009, as the second former Yugoslav republic to do so. Slovenia joined with ten other countries in May.