"This is a hard blow to the pro-European policy of Ivo Sanader," said Friedbert Pflueger, foreign policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU Christian Democrat union in the Bundestag.
Pflueger believes that the talks should have started with the possibility of postponement in case no progress was made in cooperation with the Hague tribunal.
The CDU is a member of the European People's Party which has the majority in the European Parliament and which supported the announced start of Croatia-EU talks.
A state secretary at the German Foreign Ministry, Hans Martin Bury (of the Social Democratic Party, SDP), who represented Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green party at today's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, said on the margins of the meeting that Europe still cared about talks with Croatia.
We have a common goal and that is Croatia's membership of the European Union, Bury said, adding that the talks could start if Gotovina was transferred to The Hague or if the Croatian government was found to be objectively unable to locate or extradite Gotovina.