Free Republic

Planters mark the border between Obrezje, Slovenia, foreground, and Bregana, Croatia — and between a NATO and European Union member and a nonmember. OBREZJE, Slovenia — Customers at Kalin, a rustic, 180-year-old tavern, can eat roast pork dinners here in Slovenia, step a few yards across the room to Croatia to use the bathroom, saunter back to Slovenia to pay the bill and end their meal on Croatian soil over a game of billiards and a shot of local pear brandy. They can do so because of the vagaries of history and an accident of geography. To prevent any confusion,...

ICTY - Tribunal Update Zagreb awarded damages to families of victims killed in detention. Croatia secretly paid 1.8 million kuna (250,000 euro) to the families of people killed in the notorious Lora prison camp in the early 1990s, confirmed officials this week. Lora, a Yugoslav-era naval base in the coastal city of Split, was taken over by Croatian forces in 1991, the start of the Croatian war of independence, as the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, JNA, forces withdrew. From 1992 to 1997, it functioned as a prison camp for mainly Serbian, but also Bosnian and Montenegrin, civilians and prisoners of war,...

VINKOVCI, Croatia (AFP) – Croatians on Saturday cooked up what they claim to be the world's largest sausage, measuring 530 metres (1,738 feet). Hundreds of locals gathered in the main square of Vinkovci in the country's east and grilled the giant sausage, made with 400 kilogrammes of pork, 10 kilos of salt, 2.5 kilos of spices and 3.5 kilos of garlic bought for a local farm, the town hall said.

PRAGUE — Bosnian Serb leaders have threatened to pull out of state institutions and are pressing anew for independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina, threatening to throw the fragile, multiethnic country into political crisis once again. Analysts and observers of the region said the situation could unravel the United States-brokered Dayton accords of 1995, which ended a savage war that killed more than 100,000 people, most of them Muslims, between 1992 and 1995. The pact divided Bosnia and Herzegovina into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, presided over by a decentralized political system that reinforced rather than healed ethnic divisions....

A border row dating back to the collapse of Yugoslavia is threatening Croatia's chances of completing EU membership talks this year and becoming the bloc's 28th member by 2011. Slovenia, the first former Yugoslav nation to join the EU in 2004, has been blocking talks with Croatia because of the 18-year-old dispute, which mainly concerns a small bay in the Adriatic Sea. Seen from a boat, Piran is a glorious sight - a Venetian-style city built of limestone and marble, lapped by the blue waters of the Adriatic. It's easily missed on a map, but this small bay of just...

KRAKOW, Poland, Feb 20, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX News Network) -- NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed concern on Friday that politics in Slovenia might prevent Croatia from formally joining NATO at a summit in early April. "It gives me reason for concern that we might not see a situation at the summit in Strasbourg and Kehl that we can greet Albania and Croatia in the NATO family," he told a press conference at an informal NATO defense ministers' meeting. "I think everyone involved, including in Slovenia, should do everything they can to make that happen," he said....

ZAGREB -- Had he lived, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman would today be in the Hague accused of war crimes, a former American ambassador to Croatia claims. Peter Galbraith told Zagreb daily Jutarnji List that Croatia, "had it not been for the war and Tudjman", would now be an EU member. Galbraith testified at the Hague Tribunal in the trial of Ante Gotovina and two other former Croatian generals charged with Operation Storm crimes committed in 1995. Nearly a quarter of a million ethnic Serbs were driven out of their homes during the Croatian army and police campaign. Now the Zagreb...

Serbs and Yugoslavia were Under Attack, Not Croatia In the exclusive interview, Franjo Tudjman’s Internal Affairs Minister Josip Boljkovac admitted Croat leadership carried out planned attacks on Croatia Serbs in 1991, in order to start a war. “Tudjman wanted the war at any cost, following the concept according to which Serbs must disappear from Croatia,” Boljkovac said. Croat media censored reports from Boljkovac’s testimony at the trial against former Osijek mayor Branimir Glavaš, war criminal responsible for horrific crimes against the local Serbs, concealing parts of his testimony which charge Croatia with instigating the war. “During the testimony, Glavaš accused...

From Iceland to Latvia, the growing financial crisis is triggering popular revolts. Several European governments are on the verge of being toppled. Yet, it is in the Balkans where the rising tide of discontent may have the most significant impact. The bloody breakup of Yugoslavia left in its wake successor states - all of whom, with the exception of Slovenia, are mired in economic stagnation. The region's biggest disappointment, however, has been Croatia. It is now badly lagging behind its northern Slovene neighbor due to massive political corruption. Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader vows to lead his country into the...

Zagreb. U.S. President Barack Obama might visit Croatia and Albania in April, the Croatian Jutarnji List writes on its Internet site. According to anonymous White House sources Obama will most probably visit Zagreb and Tirana immediately after the NATO summit in Strasbourg. If Obama does not visit the two countries on organizational grounds, the prime ministers of the two NATO newcomers will visit the White House, the Jutarnji List says.

A PRIEST worried about the erosion of Croatia's national identity has offered to pay parents who flout trends and give their babies traditional names. "Those who name their child after a grandfather, a grandmother, a saint ... on the day of baptising will be given 1000 kunas ($A270)," reads a notice on his church's doors in the southern coastal town of Ploce. The message is accompanied by a list suggesting some 80 Croatian male and female names considered "traditional" - such as Ante, Petar, Ana or Marija. "Anything suspicious is out of the question," the Catholic priest, Petar Mikic, was...

Mirjana Samardzija President Serbian Unity Congress Washington, D.C. 20037 March 1, 2008 Dear Ms. Samardzija, Thank you very much for your letter of February 28. I share your concerns about the situation in the Balkans and, in particular, about the need to protect minority rights in that region. For that reason, within hours of Kosovo's declaration of independence, I issued a statement that insisted that all the people of Kosovo, of whatever ethnic origin, must be able to live in a free, tolerant and prosperous society where minority rights and religious sites are fully protected. I also noted in my...

The following is a book review and testimony from American professor and veteran of the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC), John Peter Maher, who visited the former Yugoslavia several times during the 1990s, both before the wars there began and during them. His observations remain essential for any truthful historical review on what really went on over there, as opposed to the "facts" that were fed to the public via the media. Ravnagora. _________________________ Here’s a novelty. An honest book on the Yugoslav war has managed to get into print. An Irish Army officer Brendan O’Shea has published “The Modern...

DeMint: Senator Clinton, just who Is Zdenka Gast? Clinton: Zdenka Gast? Help me out here. DeMint: Let me refresh your memory. Gast played a key role in Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's fatal trip to Croatia in April 1996. Ostensibly at least, Brown went to Croatia to broker a deal between the Croatian government and a certain American corporation. Gast served as liaison between the two. Clinton: Why is this an issue? DeMint: For starters, it was a sweetheart deal the White House coerced Croatia to sign. For another, the White House's Croatian client was President Franjo Tudjman, a notorious anti-Semite....

BELGRADE, Serbia: Serbia will respond to Croatia's genocide suit at the World Court by suing its former foe for war crimes, the foreign minister said. Vuk Jeremic told state television late Tuesday that Serbia will sue Croatia over a 1995 offensive that sent tens of thousands of Serbs fleeing the country. The Netherlands-based International Court of Justice on Tuesday granted Croatia the right to sue Serbia, deciding it has the authority to rule in the case. Croatia argues that Serb attacks during the 1991-95 war of independence, which left thousands of people dead and displaced, were a form of genocide....

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

BELGRADE, ZAGREB -- Today marks the 13th anniversary of Operation Storm that led to the exodus of over 200,000 Serbs from Croatia. Storm began on August 4,1995 with an offensive by the Croatian army and police in the region of Banija, Lika, Kordun, and northern Dalmatia. A day later, the Croatian Army entered a practically deserted Knin and raised the Croatian flag. The number of victims during the operation has never been established. According to the Veritas Center for documentation and statistics, 1,900 Serbs either died or disappeared during Storm, while the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights claims that...

The funeral of a former Nazi concentration camp director in Croatia was a tribute to anti-Semitism, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said. Dinko Sakic, the last surviving concentration camp director, died last week in prison at age 87. He was convicted of war crimes and sent to prison for 20 years for running the Jasenovac camp, where tens of thousands of mostly Jews and Serbs were tortured and murdered. He remained unrepentant until his death. Croatia was run by a Nazi puppet regime during World War II, the Ustasha. Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter and head of the Wiesenthal Center's Israel...

BY ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF Thursday, July 24th 2008, 9:08 PM Daily News Zvonko Busic in a 1987 photo. A Croatian terrorist has been freed from a life sentence and shipped to his homeland - to the disgust of relatives of the city cop he murdered more than 30 years ago. Zvonko Busic, mastermind of the 1976 hijacking of TWA Flight 355 and a bombing at Grand Central station, landed in Croatia Thursday in time for dinner, officials said. "He got to go home," said Kathleen Murray, whose husband, Brian Murray, was killed in the blast. Busic,...

After more than three decades in United States prisons — a term punctuated by a brief escape and recapture — a 62-year-old Croatian independence fighter was returned to his native country on Thursday, having served his time for a 1976 hijacking and a bombing that killed a police officer. The fighter, Zvonko Busic, led a group that planted a bomb at Grand Central Terminal that later exploded, killing a city police officer, Brian J. Murray. Mr. Busic left the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., boarded a plane in Chicago and touched down in Zagreb about 2:20 p.m. on...