The European Council decided at a summit in Brussels on Friday to open accession talks with Croatia on March 17, 2005, rather than on April 26 as earlier announced.
The Council initially planned to make the start of talks conditional on the confirmation by the Council of Croatia's full cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunal, but finally toned down the wording of its decision and decided that the talks would start provided that Croatia fully cooperated with the Hague war crimes tribunal, without anyone having to actively confirm the existence of the cooperation.
"Yesterday at noon the draft text was still unsatisfactory to Croatia in both aspects: it mentioned April and the condition was active confirmation of cooperation," the high-level source at the Croatian Foreign Ministry said, adding that over the next two hours Croatian diplomats in Brussels contacted their colleagues from all 25 EU member states and managed to get "the best possible text".
The final text did not set any new conditions, but only mentioned the obligation to fulfil the earlier defined criteria, including full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, judicial reform and refugee return.
"Croatia must meet those conditions anyway, because any failure to do so may result in a delay of the start of negotiations or their suspension," the diplomat said, adding that this also referred to the case of fugitive Croatian Army general Ante Gotovina, who is sought by the Hague tribunal on war crimes charges.
"Croatia must show it is doing all it can to locate and arrest him, because his appearance before the tribunal would be best for the country and for him," the source said. "If Croatia manages to prove that he is not on its territory and that it really can do nothing, there is a possibility that negotiations may start even if he is not in The Hague by then."
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that it was "extremely important" for Croatia to have obtained March 17 as the date of the start of the talks.
"We did not want April, because in that case the European Council would discuss the same matter at a meeting on March 23. Since the Council would have to confirm the start of negotiations on April 26 by consensus, that might cause new complications", the source said.
He said that the situation now was completely different, because an assessment of Croatia's full cooperation with the Hague tribunal would be made only if it was explicitly demanded by someone such as the tribunal's chief prosecutor or any of the EU members, in which case all 25 members would have to endorse the demand. The earlier proposal provided for "unanimous active confirmation of full cooperation".
The European Council did not explicitly say who should determine the existence of full cooperation, but it was indirectly concluded that this would be done by Luxembourg, which will hold the EU rotating presidency in the first half of 2005.
The source said that key members of the Croatian negotiating team, which will be presented soon, would include Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul as head of the Croatian delegation, European Integration Minister Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic as chief negotiator, two of her assistants on legal and economic affairs, and a state secretary who will be responsible for all aspects of the negotiating process.
He said that it was possible that the three unnamed officials would already be on a delegation travelling to Brussels on January 6 to meet EU Enlargement Commission Olli Rehn for talks on the pace of negotiations and selection of negotiating chapters.
The source said that Croatia would like to start the talks with "easy" chapters in order to "get into the swing of things", but that it would made sure that it opened difficult chapters in good time in a bid to achieve its goal of completing the negotiations on the 31 chapters in 30 months, by the summer of 2007.
In choosing negotiators, Croatia would like to apply "the Slovene model" by reaching a broad consensus on selected candidates, who would later be evaluated according to their performance rather than according to political criteria, the source said.