German Papers

Horse-trading With Carla Del Ponte

Last Friday, Carla Del Ponte was criticizing Croatia for not handing over war criminals. But on Monday, she was praising the country's cooperation with her UN war crimes tribunal investigation so EU accession talks could begin with Turkey. What gives, German papers want to know?

Turkey may yet join the European Union, but only if existing members can get theirs

"You cannot imagine how disappointed I am," Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal in former Yugoslavia, said as recently as last week. She was talking about the Croation government -- specifically about Zagreb's continued unwillingness to arrest their own war criminals. Ante Gotovina, a general in the Bosnian war who was indicted by the tribunal in 2001 and who has been wandering freely around Croatia since then, has been a particular sticking point. On Friday of last week, Del Ponte said the Croatian prime minister had "promised me full cooperation, but we still have the same problem. Gotovina is still at large."

Over the weekend, though, her song changed. Turkey was all set to begin accession talks with the European Union when Austria threw a wrench in the works. Essentially, the provincial Alpine state refused to talk Turkey unless talks with Croatia were likewise restarted. And Croatia's chances on making good with the UN tribunal -- Zagreb, in other words, had to please Carla Del Ponte.

And on Monday, Del Ponte suddenly was pleased. "I can say that, for a few weeks now, Croatia has been cooperating fully with us and is doing everything it can to locate and arrest Ante Gotovina," she told an EU ministers' meeting in Luxembourg. Suddenly Croatia was in, Turkey was in, diplomacy had been saved, and it was a great day for European unity.

But the Swiss prosecutor's abrupt switcheroo has wrinkled foreheads across Europe. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Del Ponte's colleagues in The Hague are baffled and infuriated. "The irritation is very high," one longtime official told the paper on Tuesday.

"Oct. 3 will not only be marked down in the annals of EU history," writes the right-leaning daily Die Welt referring to the beginning of the historic talks with Turkey. "This day also marks the beginning of Carla Del Ponte's irreversible decline." The paper argues that politics, more than justice, have always been Del Ponte's game. "(She) doesn't see her office as an independent institution whose only function is to dispense law and justice. Del Ponte would rather turn the whole European Union into her little state ward, an organization that makes decisions on the basis of her judgements."

The Financial Times Deutschland puts it a little more mildly: "The nighttime ceremony in Luxembourg leaves a stale aftertaste. Linking Turkey to Croatia once again confirms the image of Europe as one big bazaar ... Welcome to Europe!"

More to the point, writes Berlin's left-leaning daily, Die Tageszeitung, the Turks have learned a lesson. Whatever Europe may want from Croatia (or Turkey) in political reform or human rights is just a poker chip. "Anyone hoping to climb onto the European stage doesn't need honest intentions or strong arguments so much as good collateral ... It has nothing to do with whether a nation is fit for the EU or even whether it belongs in Europe. More important for a successful bid is what member nations can gain by taking on someone new."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine is also uncomfortable with Del Ponte's about face. "It's the right thing for Europe to open talks with Croatia," the paper asserts. "But somehow the circumstances leave a strange aftertaste."

Finally, the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung casts an uncharacteristically sour eye on the EU in a lead editorial titled "Time for a New Union." The writer thinks Turkey, Croatia, and future Balkan members would form a sort of "union within a union" and spoil the whole point of the EU project. "Romantics talk about diversity ... but already the centrifugal forces are impossible not to see. This year Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Austria showed they put national interests above European interests. This tendency will increase with each enlargement, and cohesion will suffer." Some people argue that a strong EU needs to be large, says the paper, but "that's a game of appearances. In fact the EU will be weaker in 20 years" if it tries to remain a union of equal members. "Nations like Britain and Turkey, whose citizens for the most part don't see themselves as Europeans, could make do with limited integration."