ROME, Feb 6 (Hina) - Croatia's ambassador to Italy has reacted to a piece in Friday's La Repubblica newspaper which said that Croatian General Ante Gotovina, who is wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, had "massacred
not less than 200,000 Serbs".
ROME, Feb 6 (Hina) - Croatia's ambassador to Italy has reacted to a
piece in Friday's La Repubblica newspaper which said that Croatian
General Ante Gotovina, who is wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal
in The Hague, had "massacred not less than 200,000 Serbs".#L#
The article by Paolo Garimberti appeared in the daily's Friday
supplement Il Venerdi. Ambassador Drago Kraljevic's letter might be
published next Friday.
In connection with the accusation against Gotovina, Kraljevic writes
that "such a bewildering claim hasn't been made by anyone yet, nor is
it in any way authentic".
The ambassador says Croatia's position is clear -- it wants all who
committed crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia to be
punished, regardless of faith or nationality and independently of the
units they were in. Croatia insists on the determination of individual
responsibility, he adds, recalling that Croatia's judiciary is
accelerating work on shedding light on war crimes and their
perpetrators, "without waiting for encouragement from the Hague
tribunal".
"It is the only right way to protect the dignity of our defensive war
and secure the way to full European Union membership," Kraljevic
writes.
He agrees with Garimberti's claim that all governments in the former
Yugoslavia should assume the responsibility towards history and
cooperate with the tribunal in The Hague.
Garimberti also writes about the slowness of the Hague trials, stating
that the most scandalous case of non-punishment is the failure to
arrest the Bosnian Serb warlords Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. He
labels the two the most responsible for the ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and says they are protected by some political and
military figures in Belgrade as well as by the West.
"Not less scandalous is the failure to arrest Ante Gotovina, the
Croatian general who reconquered the Krajina in 1995 and slaughtered
(massacred) not less than 200,000 Serbs. The authorities in Zagreb
have always claimed they don't know his whereabouts. An apology that's
as ridiculous as the insufficient American cooperation is suspect (the
U.S. was Croatia's military and political advisor during the
conflict)," the La Repubblica piece read.
(Hina) ha