Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support this resolution as the ranking member of the Helsinki Commission. I visited Croatia in 2000, shortly after new leadership came into power, and I was confident of the country’s commitment to reform. I believe, 5 years later, we have seen that the people of Croatia truly are committed to reform.
Of particular interest to me as a determinant of U.S. policy toward southeastern Europe has been the degree to which countries cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague. While Croatia has had a generally good record in this regard, the Gotovina case remained as a blot on that record. Fortunately, with Gotovina’s recent apprehension on Spain’s Canary Islands, Croatia can put this issue behind it.
I hope, however, that the people of Croatia will view the work of the Tribunal as a necessary step to determine guilt or innocence, and that Croatian courts will similarly seek justice regarding cases relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity that it considers, regardless of who was responsible for these crimes and who were the victims.
I also call for all remaining indictees to be apprehended and transferred to The Hague, in particular Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. The House made a similar call earlier this year when passing the resolution marking the massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia. There has been some progress this year, but both Bosnian Serb and Serbian authorities need to do more. Otherwise, they will fall further behind in European and Euro-Atlantic integration to their own detriment.