A few years back, when this story started, a joke circulated... It goes like this:

The Croatian Prime Minister came to Bruxelles to ask the Euro-bureaucrats for help with modernising this, restructuring that, and making something else more efficient. He was promised all the necessary aid, help, and counsel, but they asked him, how is Croatia going to pay for all that? And he replied, cash.

Not a very funny joke when told in English - it's one of those word game things that don't translate well. The Croatian word for 'cash' is the last name of the most wanted Croatian, General Ante Gotovina, an undisputed hero of the war that Serbia waged on Croatian territory, and an accused war criminal. The cause of the fact that, in two days, Croatia won't be starting negotiations to join the EU, as was scheduled. (You'll hear the current Prime Minister saying, thinking and hoping that the negotiations will be starting on Thursday, but he's just trying not to lose the upcoming local elections.) I hear it's a precedent.

General Gotovina's guilt or innocence is not the issue here, although what he hopes to achieve by having his name associated with the names of Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic in UN Security Council resolutions is beyond me. Whether he will go and defend his honour in front of the Hague tribunal, or keep hiding, is his decision to make. I'm not going to judge him for it, because I'm not sure I'd do differently myself, were I in his shoes.

Some say that he's holding the entire country hostage by refusing to surrender. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

The blame lies on the Government of Croatia (and all its institutions), both the previous and the current one. The previous one, for letting him go into hiding in the first place, in a vain attempt to appease certain more, khm, conservative parts of the electorate, and not lose the elections. The current one, for actively and vocally supporting (appeasing the afore-mentioned parts of the electorate) his escape while in the opposition, and then nominally trying to catch him when they came to power, while our intelligence services spied on the Hague investigators instead of looking for Gotovina. The belated attempts to order, through the newspapers, the relevant agencies to 'intensify' the search didn't look well, either. Simply put, we have no respect for our own laws and obligations, and this is just the one example that is most obvious to the international community.

It is not Ante Gotovina's fitness to be a member of the European Union that is being judged here. It is the fitness of the Republic of Croatia that is in doubt. The Republic of Croatia, to the great sorrow of its citizens, is sadly unfit.