Croatia's Most Wanted Becomes One of the America's Most Wanted

Croatia has reasons to be proud today – one of their favourite sons is in the same league with the likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Radovan Karadžić (Radovan Karadzic) and Ratko Mladić (Ratko Mladic). Since Croatian government and ICTY prosecutors can't come to mutual understanding about whereabouts of General Ante Gotovina, war crime suspect and country's best known and most popular fugitive, US government intervened by offering 5 million US$ reward to anyone offering that particular information.

That sum equals the reward offered for Karadžić and Mladić, and is 1/5 of the reward offered for Saddam Hussein. It is almost 100 times more than the reward offered by Croatian government and counter-reward offered by HB (for the information about the man who betrayed Gotovina).

With this reward, US government has crushed all Račan's (Racan's) hopes of Gotovina affair ending with some sort of face-saving compromise (which was often floated in Croatian media, especially in Nacional, which recently turned into Gotovina fanzine). Račan could see the writing on the wall after UN Security Council resolution that had put Gotovina's name in the same batch with Karadžić and Mladić, ordering all governments to do their utmost to bring those war crimes suspects to justice. Račan's diplomatic abilities, that had served him well during Norac and Bobetko affair, have failed him now.