8.000 dead men and a few logs

Serge Brammertz is probably the best know Belgian in Croatia. As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia he is a key judge on Croatia's progress towards EU membership. Brammertz is often bracketed together with "artillery logs", or "topnički dnevnici" in Croatian. The Tribunal thinks to find evidence of excessive shelling of Knin (the Serbian stronghold and "capital" of the so called Republic of Serbian Krajina). The Croatian army led by Ante Gotovina, who's spending his time in The Hague waiting for evidence against him, conquered Knin in 1995 as part of Operation Storm. Croats regard this as a tremendous military success, but the international community (a nickname for the powerful) suspects the army of having committed war crimes against the Serbian population of Knin. The logs Brammertz is looking for did never exist, were stolen or disappeared - each side sticks to its own version. More about the logs here and here.
What annoys Croats in particular is the tough stance of The Netherlands on this issue. The Dutch consider Croatia's cooperation with the Tribunal insufficient. I have heard several prominent Croats say the Dutch attitude is related with Srebrenica. "Dutch soldiers stood idle when 8.000 Muslim men from Srebrenica were murdered and now they are blocking our EU accession over a few artillery logs," a commentator sneered earlier this week.

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