Straw's speech in Parliament was carried by Croatian Television during prime time news Wednesday.
Liam Fox, in charge of foreign affairs in the Conservative Party, wanted to know if Gotovina's extradition to The Hague would be a condition for Croatia's full membership of the EU.
The answer is no. This was never the case for obvious reasons, he said. We never expected Croatia to be able to extradite Gotovina if it was not in position to do so, the Briton said. He could disappear, go to a place from which the best intelligence and police forces could not extradite him, Straw said in his response to Fox.
Straw also explained why the ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte's latest report about Croatia's cooperation was positive. I am pleased to say that Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader succeeded in showing and proving that he is controlling his own intelligence services, he said, adding that this fact enabled del Ponte to establish that the country was now fully cooperating.
Commenting on the length of Croatia's negotiations, the British foreign secretary said that unlike Turkey, Croatia was a small country, that it had been ready for the negotiations for a long time, and that it had met all Copenhagen criteria. He added that he expected the negotiations to be completed quickly.