Del Ponte on Monday spoke on the phone with the president of the EU Council of Ministers, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean Asselbourn. She briefly assessed Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague and said she would send her report on Tuesday.
The report is almost identical to the one she prepared for the UN Security Council, the same source said. Del Ponte is scheduled to address the Security Council on June 13.
The Luxembourg Presidency plans to forward the prosecutor's report to all EU member states and then hold consultations with them so as to determine whether or not it is necessary to call a new meeting of the EU task force in charge of assessing Croatia's cooperation with the Hague tribunal. The consultations should be completed by the end of this week.
Croatia was scheduled to start EU entry talks on March 17. The talks, however, were postponed until all EU member states agree that Zagreb is entirely cooperating with the UN war crimes tribunal.
During her visit to Zagreb last week, del Ponte said she would report to the UN Security Council that Croatia and its action plan are entirely oriented towards arresting fugitive general Ante Gotovina and expressed expectations the country would arrest the runaway general. She added, however, that it was too early to say whether or not Croatia fully cooperated with the tribunal in The Hague.
With the action plan, Croatia is entirely determined to locate and arrest Gotovina and I expect Croatia to do that or to prove that it has done everything it could to arrest him, del Ponte said after talks with Croatian PM Ivo Sanader in Zagreb and added that her report to the UN Security Council would say that.