OBSTACLE ON THE ROAD TO THE EU Serge Brammertz, the Hague chief prosecutor: a part of the Croatian negotiations on accession to the European Union depends on his judgement, which means he has to be convinced of Croatia's complete cooperation with the prosecutionThe Croatian Government has largely succeeded in reconstructing who created the 23 so-called artillery logs, the archive material of interest to the Hague prosecution in the trials of Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac. These people have been questioned on several occasions, so that it can be said that Government has made a significant move forward to locate these documents, or to precisely ascertain their fate, as they remain inaccessible to the authorities, and may have been destroyed. This significant step forward is the result of an explicit order issued by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who wants at all costs to resolve this potentially very embarrassing issue. In order to reconstruct the whereabouts of these controversial documents, the competent Croatian institutions have spoken to several persons over the past few weeks that are suspected of having come into contact with these documents. The documents themselves, however, have yet to be located. Questioning is still ongoing, and there have been repeated meetings with persons suspected of not having divulged all they know of the issue.

Nacional has learned from sources close to the highest-ranking members of Government that Justice Minister Ivan Simonovic could soon, on the direct orders of Prime Minister Sanader, send the Hague prosecution another detailed report on who and at what time came into contact with the controversial documents. Among others, there are for the moment serious suspicions that Marin Ivanovic, one of the people assisting the Ante Gotovina defence team, handled a part of these documents. The Government has also been very energetic in these activities because they have learned from military circles in great and exhaustive detail that absolutely nothing could be found in the so-called artillery logs that would compromise the indicted generals. On the other hand, this approach has been a cause for concern for some persons whose names are associated with the missing documents. One of the people that has recently come under police scrutiny several times in connection with the artillery logs has told Nacional that they fear that the Hague prosecution could put them on the list of witnesses, which would however, in their opinion, to some extent aggravate the position of the indicted generals in The Hague.

The Government's latest initiative emerged as the result of diplomatic activity. Top members of the Croatian Government decided for the move because Croatian diplomats have learned that The Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, and even Sweden, which has adroitly supported Croatia in its efforts to resolve the Slovenian blockade of the negotiations, will in no case allow Croatia to move forward with the EU accession talks until the issue of the artillery logs is resolved.

Sanader hopes that the report could convince the Hague prosecution that Croatia is not withholding anything in this regard, or at least partially remove this embarrassing burden from Government. The Government will send the Hague prosecution this report above all with the intention of providing a credible explanation of why, since they have not been able to find them, these documents are no longer accessible to the Croatian Government.

Back on 27 February, the European Union issued Croatia a demarche, citing insufficient cooperation with the Hague tribunal on the issue of the artillery logs. A sharp warning from the EU Presidency concerning the cooperation with the Hague and the so-called artillery logs was handed to Justice Minister Ivan KAREL KÜHNL, the Czech ambassador, on 27 February handed Simonovic a EU demarche concerning the artillery logsSimonovic by Czech Ambassador Karel Kühnl, as the delegate of the presiding EU nation. Government's initial reaction to the issue was irresponsible. Initially it kept the warning a top secret. For a full seven days no one in Government or the justice ministry informed the public of the action, most likely to try to show that Croatian was on the verge of new big problems in the EU negotiations. In the demarche at issue it was clearly stated that the problem of the 23 controversial documents sought by the Hague tribunal are considered by the EU a "priority issue for the opening of the negotiations in the chapter on the judiciary and fundamental rights." The European Union has taken so firm a position on the issue because Croatia promised full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, and above all with the Office of the Hague Chief Prosecutor. Croatia has therefore been told that it cannot expect the talks to open on that chapter until the issue is satisfactorily resolved.

The archive material of interest to the Hague prosecution was not kept in safes from 1996 to 2004, at ten different locations, above all at Zvonimirov Street in Zagreb, but also in the various Croatian Army corpus's in Karlovac, Osijek, Rijeka and Split. They were, in fact, accessible to many people, who handled them, or simply appropriated them for various reasons. And precisely because a part of this documentation has disappeared Croatia will not be able to fully comply with the request from the Hague prosecution when it comes to the artillery documentation. That is why there has been a vigorous move to question all those suspected of having come into contact with the documents. And there has already been success in reconstructing who drafted the requested documents. That is why some fragments of the documentation have already been passed on to the Hague prosecution, not those, however, that have been requested. After the Homeland War the military archives were not kept at a single location, nor were they well guarded, or systematised. They were available to every agent of the Security and Information Service (SIS) who could easily have manipulated them – depending on who would request such a favour. These favours were previously, by all accounts, sought by the defence attorneys of some of the indicted generals that were close to the military secret services.

Former Chief of General Staff Petar Stipetic also noticed how difficult it was to collect wartime documentation when he was called before the Hague tribunal as a witness. Preparing himself for the interrogation with Hague investigators, he found it very difficult to find the documentation he needed to be of use during the questioning, because a large number of documents were dispersed at different locations or were missing. The missing artillery documentation produced by Croatian Army units and the military districts ahead of Operation Storm should have been located at the central military archives, while the other part of the documentation concerning the commands and analysis of Croatian Army Supreme Command was kept at its department of operational affairs, Nacional has learned from justice department sources. The only people who had access to the documentation needed for the cooperation of Croatia with the Hague tribunal, at both of the cited organisational units, were the members of the defence ministry's former Security and Information Service (SIS), now a part of the Military Security & Intelligence Agency (VSOA).

SIS agents would come to the department of operational affairs, located at the military complex on Petar Kresimir IV Square in Zagreb, collect copies of the documents, while the original had to stay at the department. The agents would then declassify the documents and send them to the government office responsible for cooperation with the Hague tribunal. The original of each document from the department of operational affairs, therefore, has to still be in the archives. The situation with the central military archives is significantly more complex and problematic, however. As of 2004 the documentation of 300 military units, comprising 7,000 metres of archive material, has been kept at the new home of the Central Military Archives, a 1,800 square metre facility at the Croatian Military Academy. As of 2004 a part of the most valuable and politically most sensitive archive material has been kept in special safes.

And it has been established that several hundred original documents are in the private archives of officers and soldiers, or were simply destroyed, not because their content might have been compromising, but simply because they felt that it was "old paper" that only cluttered their homes. As a result the Hague prosecution apparently has a measure of understanding for the difficulties in locating the documentation, as it has been notified in great detail of the fact that the archival material was never systematically kept at one location. It is, however, very much an open question whether the Hague prosecution will award a passing grade to Croatia's cooperation if it is not established who in the chain of military command was the last link where precisely determined documentation went missing.

That, precisely, is why Croatia has moved energetically to question all those in the chain of command and a report to this effect should soon find its way to the Hague prosecutors.