"Croatia is aware of all the political criteria it needs to fulfil, and it will fulfil them, but we request that the European Council and the European Union judge Croatia like any other country, on the basis of overall criteria, on the basis of what it has fulfilled and what it can and should do," Zuzul told reporters after meeting Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency.
Juncker did not speak to the press after the meeting, saying that he had to catch a plane for Budapest.
Asked to comment on the EU's message that it would be very hard to open membership talks on March 17 unless Gotovina was in The Hague by then, Zuzul said that this unfair insistence on one case was not in line with the decisions the EU had taken so far.
"We do not think it is fair. It is not in line with the decisions that have so far been taken by the EU, the December decision of the European Council and earlier decisions. Every country should be evaluated on how it fulfils all the criteria," Zuzul said.
"Insisting on one case that cannot be resolved for whatever reason cannot be a decisive criterion for any country, but the fulfilment of all the criteria," he said and added: "Neither can Croatia be a hostage to one person, nor can the international community make a country hostage to a case it cannot resolve at a given moment."
Asked what Croatia was doing to locate the runaway general and hand him over to The Hague, the foreign minister said he could not comment on the steps the Croatian government was taking in this case "for understandable reasons", but stressed that the government was certainly doing all in its power to close the case.
Responding to the question whether Gotovina would be arrested by February 21, when Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte is due to submit an additional report to the EU Council of Ministers on Croatia's cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Zuzul said: "No one can promise that, because as far as I know none of the officials in Croatia or in the world know the general's whereabouts."
Asked if Juncker acquainted him with the facts on which del Ponte based her conviction that the Croatian government was able to arrest the general if it wanted to, Zuzul said that the government was acquainted with a circular letter which the chief prosecutor had sent to EU foreign ministers and that the government could give a clear answer to every fact contained in the letter.
Later in the day Zuzul is also scheduled to meet European Development Commissioner Louis Michel on the margins of a meeting of EU development ministers in Luxembourg.