Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel attacked the opening of talks with Turkey over European Union membership while Croatia’s application was being shelved.
“I find it grotesque that membership negotiations are being started with Turkey at the same time that Croatia is left waiting outside,” Schüssel told a congress of the German conservative Christian Social Union (CSP) party in Nuremberg in southern Germany.
Schüssel, himself a conservative, opposes Turkish membership and praised the “merits” of Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader who was at the congress.
The Bavarian-based CSU is the junior partner of the Christian Democratic Union, headed by Angela Merkel, who was tipped by opinion polls to win the general election.
Refreshing historic content
In 1930 a pro-fascist Croatian nationalist organisation known as the Ustasha was founded in Croatia.
On 6 April 1941, Nazi troops invaded Yugoslavia. Four days later, the Axis powers established the so-called “Independent State of Croatia,” or Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska (“NDH”) in the Croatian language.
Power in the newly established fascist State was given to the Ustasha, and the Ustasha founder, Ante Pavelic, was named the Croatian fuehrer, or “poglavnik”. The Nazi puppet State occupied the territory that makes up the present-day territories of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
During the Second World War, the Ustasha killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs and gypsies, and forced hundreds of thousands more to either flee from the Independent State of Croatia, or convert to the Roman Catholic religion.
In 1941 the Independent State of Croatia built the notorious Jasenovac extermination camp. According to the Wiesenthal Centre, approximately 600,000, predominantly Serb, prisoners were killed there. Historians call this camp the “Auschwitz of the Balkans.”
With the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, Yugoslavia’s Partisan Army, led by Josip Broz Tito, ousted the Ustasha regime, liberated Croatia, and re-integrated it into the Yugoslav State.
Both Croatia and Serbia had pro-Axis governments during World War II. All the nations of Yugoslavia had elements which supported the Axis, and all had elements that were anti-Axis during the war. However, it was the Croatian dominated partisans, led by the Croatian Josip Broz Tito which formed the only true anti-Fascist fighting force in Yugoslavia and the most formidable Allied force in occupied Europe during World War II.
World War II came to Yugoslavia as a direct result of the pro-Axis sentiments of the Serbian controlled Yugoslav government. Under Prince Paul, Yugoslavia moved steadily away from France and toward Germany after the death of King Alexander. As early as February of 1936 Hitler promised to support the government of Premier Milan Stojadinovic.
By 1937 Stojadinovic had visited Mussolini, developed his own squad of “Green Shirts” and adopted the Nazi salute. It was perhaps taking the title Vodja (Fuhrer) that finally galvanised Prince Paul into action, replacing Stojadinovic with Dragisa Cvetkovic who maintained the same pro-Axis foreign policy but with fewer Fascist trappings.
Prince Paul saw the Third Reich as the only power able to maintain the artificial state of Yugoslavia and he began secret negotiations with top Nazi officials in December 1939. He hoped that he could become King under the New Order, denying the young Crown Prince Peter his title. Yugoslavia joined the Axis on 24 March 1941.
How did Croatia become an independent State?
In 1991–50 years later – Germany recognised the Yugoslav province of Croatia as an independent nation, something it hadn’t been for hundreds of years, unless you count 1941–1944 when Hitler declared it to be a loyal and sovereign fascist State.
The rest of the world was vehemently opposed to Germany’s outrageous plot. Indeed, one European nation after another, and even the United States, warned gravely that granting independence to Croatia would lead to all-out civil war throughout Yugoslavia. But Germany’s leaders were adamant. Kohl was Chancellor in those days, head of a rightwing government that was riding high after defying Europe by annexing East Germany only a year earlier. Croatia, run by a neo-fascist named Tudjman, would be Germany’s first outpost in Eastern Europe.
Showdown time came in December 1991 when Europe’s leaders met to negotiate the Treaty of Maastricht – the pact which would lead the way to today’s European Union and single currency. All the nations present in Maastricht except Germany wanted to hammer out the treaty. But German foreign minister Genscher resorted to blackmail, warning that the whole Treaty was off unless Europe guaranteed it would recognise Croatian independence.
By then, Tudjman’s troops, guided by German military and intelligence “advisers,” were already fighting soldiers of the Yugoslav central government. Yet it was a civil war – an internal dispute – which meant other nations could not intervene. Germany’s demand backed by Genscher’s threat would change all that. Only days after Europe caved in and recognised Croatia as an independent State, Kohl and Genscher proclaimed that the strife was now an international conflict, opening the door to foreign intervention.
In 1986, Slobodan Milosevic was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia and was re-elected in 1988. On 16 July 1990, the League of Communists of Serbia and the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Serbia united, forming a new party named the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). On 17 July 1990, Slobodan Milosevic was elected President of Serbia.
Under its nationalist president Franjo Tudjman, Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia on 25 June 1991, provoking an immediate response from the federal Yugoslav military. Unlike the brief fighting in Slovenia, the other breakaway republic, the clashes between federal troops and republic defence forces in Croatia erupted into a full-scale war.
In order to get rid of the alleged war-criminal Milosevic of Serbia, European Commission officials said they would offer a multi-million aid package if Milosevic was delivered to the Yugoslav War Tribunal in The Hague. Condition: COD.
The EU Commission and the USA estimate it paid 150 million euros ($155 million) in 1999, and 500 million euros ($516 million) in each of the following three years to rebuild roads, homes and other buildings. The total price for the extradition of Milosevic was $1.6 billion.
European Union Horse-trading links: Austria – Turkey – Croatia.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel is blocking an EU deal on Turkey.
Schüssel has also accused the EU of being guilty of “double standards” over Croatia.
In a categorical message to Turkey on Wednesday, Schüssel increased the possibility that accession talks with Ankara will only commence if the EU also moves to negotiations with Croatia.
Zagreb’s membership talks are stalled until an army general is handed over to war crimes investigators.
Schüssel’s calls echo those of Europe’s Christian Democrat leader, Hans-Gert Pöttering, who told Wednesday’s rowdy parliamentary plenary session in Strasbourg that the EU was being unfairly hostile to Zagreb.
“Everyone shut their eyes to the human rights issue in Turkey while Croatia was to be refused the start of negotiations because a single general – one who was plainly not even in Croatia – had not yet been delivered to the Hague Tribunal,” he declared.
Many EU diplomats are concerned that a rapid deal with Croatia could set back efforts to find war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia.
Germany’s leadership contender Angela Merkel (Helmut Kohl’s protégée) has not disguised her hostility towards full Turkish membership and her arrival would undoubtedly buttress the privileged partnership campaign.
Link to the European Constitution
European leaders and EU candidate Turkey hailed their historic deal to launch membership talks Tuesday as a bridge between cultures, but looked warily ahead to the task of convincing a deeply sceptical public.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, home to Europe’s largest Turkish immigrant community, said he was delighted.
“A Turkey which shows that Islam and the values of European enlightenment can be consistent would represent an enormous boost to the stability and security of Europe and beyond,” said Schroeder, one of Ankara’s strongest supporters.
No wonder there is no mention of Christian values in the proposed EU Constitution, isn’t it?