War crimes tribunal puts justice on European agenda

Europe's refusal Wednesday to begin EU accession talks with Croatia because of lack of cooperation on war crimes shows how the UN war crimes tribunal has cemented questions of justice firmly onto the European agenda.

Though they had previously severely criticised Zagreb for its attitude towards the tribunal, court president Theodor Meron and prosecutor Carla Del Ponte did not react to the decision which their staff described as "political."

The 25 EU member states delayed the opening of membership talks with Croatia because Zagreb has failed to hand over to the tribunal fugitive general Ante Gotovina, accused of murdering some 150 ethnic Serbs during the final stages of Croatia's 1991-95 war.

"If the tribunal did not exist, this question would not have been an issue in Croatia's accession to the European Union," said Avril McDonald, professor of international law at the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague.

She noted that between Nazi trials after World War II and the creation of the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993, pursuing war criminals and the fight against impunity were a low priority internationally.

But gradually, the heat is being turned up -- the European Union has now demanded that Balkan countries seeking EU membership cooperate with the tribunal and transfer war crimes suspects.

While economic issues were previously central to accession talks, the EU now routinely includes justice and legal issues when mulling new memberships. A notable example is EU candidate Turkey, forced to adopt wide-ranging legal reforms in order to begin talks later this year.

"People realise how important it is that countries have the courage to face up to their war crimes, whether it's with a truth and reconciliation commission or a tribunal," said Heikelina Verrijn Stuart, a Dutch international law expert.

Paradoxically, "while the large states are infringing on human rights, as with the discussion on torture or the introduction of very severe anti-terrorist laws, human rights is also a subject which is becoming harder and harder to bypass,", she said.

She said she was disappointed that the European Union has concentrated only on the case of the transfer of general Gotovina.

"That countries must cooperate with the tribunal, that goes without saying, but what is even more important is that the states in transition put in place a decent justice system and establish a state of law," she said.

In a December 2004 report, the organisation Human Rights Watch expressed disappointment that the EU had not required from Croatia "an improvement in the local legal processes for war crimes which currently suffer because of a lack of professionalism and bias by the courts."

The organisation noted, as has as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), that Serbs were disproportionately represented among the accused in war crimes trials.

If the delay of the accession talks shows that justice has become a criteria which counts, the consequences of this decision remain difficult to qualify.

"There is a danger that Croats will turn away from Europe,", McDonald said.