US embassy cable - 05ZAGREB418

C O N F I D E N T I A L  ZAGREB 000418 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPT FOR EUR/SCE - KABUMOTO, BENEDICT 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, KAWC, HR, Political Parties/Elections, War Crimes 
SUBJECT: GOTOVINA HUNT BRINGS FAR RIGHT OUT OF THE WOODWORK 
 
REF: A. ZAGREB 173 
 
     B. 04 ZAGREB 2207 
 
Classified By: Classified By: Ambassador Ralph Frank for reasons 1.5 (b 
) & (d). 
 
1. (C) SUMMARY AND COMMENT: As March 17 looms and pressure to 
apprehend Gotovina builds, Croatia's small but vocal far 
right-wing has again found its voice, loudly protesting what 
it sees as foreign interference in domestic issues.  The 
several recent poster campaigns supporting the fugitive 
general and renewed anti-ICTY rhetoric help illustrate why 
the will of PM Ivo Sanader to comply with international 
demands has not led to Gotovina's arrest. 
 
2. (C) While significant, this resurgence of the far right 
should not be exaggerated.  All credible political parties 
remain solidly focused on reform and EU integration.  The 
real question lies in how the parties will respond to these 
anti-European attitudes, particularly the ruling Croatian 
Democratic Union (HDZ), where right-leaning members feel 
frustrated with a party that has made huge concessions which 
the EU has seemingly failed to recognize or reward.  A more 
moderate and rational approach across the political spectrum, 
such as that advocated by President Mesic, would ensure these 
isolationist attitudes do not lure in a wider public equally 
frustrated by the imminent postponement of EU entry talks, 
now a symbol of Croatia's only future. 
 
3. (C) President Stjepan Mesic made the first move in his 
televised March 10 address to the nation, saying a date is 
less important than Croatia's lasting commitment to reaching 
EU standards and ultimately membership.  He warned against 
radical elements who "seek to isolate Croatia for their own 
political purposes."  Similar reactions from major opposition 
parties would be a welcome step toward calming an agitated 
public.  However, opposition leaders may be unlikely to help 
the ruling HDZ just two months before hotly contested local 
elections.  Mesic's statement may push them to make their 
contribution.  END SUMMARY AND COMMENT. 
 
HMMM, WHICH TO GIVE UP ) ANTE OR THE EU? 
---------------------------------------- 
 
3. (U) The "St. Patrick,s Day Fever" surrounding the 
scheduled March 17 start of EU negotiations has confused the 
Croatian public as they are repeatedly presented in the media 
with a choice between the fugitive general and the EU.  While 
polls vary in their reliability and tend to oversimplify the 
issue, the majority of respondents, when asked to choose 
between "surrendering" Gotovina and starting EU talks, favor 
protecting the war crimes suspect over guaranteeing the 
country's European future. 
 
4. (U) A recent poll commissioned by the daily newspaper 
Jutarnji List showed that a majority of HDZ voters oppose 
efforts to locate and arrest Gotovina, and only a small 
minority said they would notify the police if they saw him 
(following Deputy PM Jadranka Kosor's dramatic example in ref 
A).  Regardless of Gotovina, accession to the EU now gets 
less than a 50-percent support in Croatia. This latest 
upsurge of Euro-skepticism has provided a soap-box for a 
number of far right-wing groups. 
 
VETERANS DEFENDING THE HOMELAND DEFENDERS 
----------------------------------------- 
 
5. (U) Veterans' groups, representing several hundred 
thousand members, top the list of opponents to Gotovina's 
extradition.  Two southern branches of HVIDRA, a leading 
association for disabled war veterans, gathered on February 
25 in the coastal city of Zadar to discuss "the truth about 
the Homeland War."  The event turned into a pro-Gotovina 
rally.  At the same time HVIDRA President and HDZ MP Josip 
Djakic said that Gotovina should go to The Hague to present 
his case.  The rumble of protests prompted Djakic to later 
claim that he had meant that ICTY investigators should 
interview Gotovina in Croatia. 
 
6. (C) On March 8, Djakic told PolOff he fears that if 
current tensions continue he will have to choose between 
HVIDRA and the HDZ. Like most veterans, he said he is 
particularly aggravated by the part of the ICTY indictment 
that charges Gotovina with engaging in a joint criminal 
enterprise, "a charge that incriminates the whole nation 
which only fought for freedom." Djakic told us he believes 
most veterans' groups will now move farther to the right to 
support other parties, especially the Croatian Party of 
Rights (HSP). 
 
7. (U) The Zadar convention prompted other veterans' groups 
to take a stand.  Members of a committee representing 37 war 
veterans' associations from Dalmatia held their own "truth 
 
and peace" convention in Knin March 12.  The group put up a 
small Gotovina billboard outside a caf, announcing that they 
were sending "a serious warning to Croatian authorities and 
particularly to all foreign blackmailers."  The committee 
said that "Only Croats have the right to decide in what 
direction Croatia will go (and) who they will celebrate as 
their hero." 
 
8. (U) Likewise, retired colonel Mirko Condic, who used to 
lead mass protests with HDZ help against the former 
left-of-center government over its cooperation with the ICTY, 
announced March 1 that he is pondering formation of a new 
political party that would include a "military wing" and 
would "defend the true interests of the Croatian veterans and 
guard the dignity of the Homeland War."  President Mesic 
discarded this initiative as irrelevant because Condic has 
been abandoned by the HDZ, his real source of influence. 
When asked in Parliament on March 9 to comment on Condic's 
announcement, PM Sanader said his idea was "undemocratic and 
unacceptable" and his political work "disputable." 
 
RIGHT-WING INTELLECTUALS WEIGH IN 
--------------------------------- 
 
9. (U) At a different venue, but in a similar atmosphere, a 
group of conservative intellectuals convened on February 28 
in Zagreb to adopt a "Declaration on the State of Croatian 
Nation and Culture." This group complained that Croatian 
culture was dominated by individuals with views "contrary to 
the Croatian tradition" who "work day and night to destroy 
the Croatian cultural identity." Similarly, they protested 
what they viewed as disrespect for the Croatian language and 
its classics, falsification of Croatian history and attempts 
to downplay the events and figures that are essential for the 
survival of the Croatian people. The group includes some 
fifty academicians, writers, painters, journalists and 
clerics, some of whom are past or present HDZ members. Their 
informal leader is Igor Zidic, President of the Matica 
Hrvatska cultural organization, who warned with 
characteristic Euro-skepticism about the "slave-like 
position" of Croatia in the EU, a mere "commercial company" 
where "big stockholders with colonial appetites dictate terms 
to the small ones.8 
 
BELLWETHER PARTY OF RIGHTS STILL LEANING TOWARD THE CENTER 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
 
10. (SBU) An encouraging sign that the far right remains in 
check is the stance of the HSP, which just to the right of 
the HDZ stands to gain in any shift of the conservative voter 
base, having already surpassed the centrist Croatian People's 
Party (HNS) in some polls as the nation's third largest 
party.  According to recently-recruited advisor Mate Granic, 
former HDZ Deputy PM and Foreign Minister, the HSP continues 
to re-make its image into that of a modern conservative party 
"fully based on European values," along the lines of 
Germany's CDU or the Austrian People's Party. Shunning its 
black-shirted past, the party is planning a visit for HSP 
President Anto Djapic to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, where he will 
condemn the Ustashe,s WWII crimes. 
FRANK 
 
 
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