Editorial: Croatia's Dangerous Extremism

[C] roatia, like many other countries, has a neo-Nazi fringe, complete with ethnic hatred, nationalist symbols and a fascist salute. The danger in Croatia, however, does not come from this small group of extremists, but from the more sophisticated leaders in the country's mainstream who share their desire for a larger, ethnically pure Croatia. While attention has been focused on Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, Croatian nationalism is probably more dangerous to Balkan peace.

Extreme nationalism is prominent in Croatia not because most Croatians endorse it -- they do not -- but because the nationalists intimidate their opponents. They are also rich, thanks to smuggling and the support of hard-line Croat émigrés.

The nationalists are powerful enough that President Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union party has taken one of the four small neo-Nazi parties as a coalition partner. Extremists also control the right wing of Mr. Tudjman's party. The wing's leader, Defense Minister Gojko Susak, is Mr. Tudjman's closest adviser and may well become president after Mr. Tudjman, who has cancer, dies.

Mr. Tudjman's regime has revived some of the symbols and ideology of World War II Croatia. That era is attractive to many because it was the first time in centuries Croatia was an independent nation. But the state was a Nazi ally whose collaborators, known as the Ustashe, killed hundreds of thousands of partisans, Serbs and Jews.

The larger danger is that the nationalists in the Government, who are often supported by Mr. Tudjman, want to extend Croatia to encompass all ethnically Croat areas. This squeezes Bosnia, and threatens the Bosnian-Croat military alliance that can keep the Bosnian Serbs in check. The crucial area is the city of Mostar. Under the peace accords, Mostar is supposed to be governed as a unified city by Croats and Muslims. Instead, it resembles cold-war Berlin. Mostar is in Bosnia, but Mr. Tudjman treats the Croat side as part of Croatia and keeps close ties to the thugs who run it. He kicked off this year's Croatian election with a trip to Mostar. Croatia's currency circulates there. Mr. Tudjman could sack Mostar's leaders and keep his pledge of integrating the area into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He apparently chooses not to. The Croatian Government also continues to block ethnic Serbs from returning to parts of Croatia where they lived. It has harbored Bosnian Croats indicted by the international war crimes tribunal for directing massacres. Mr. Tudjman even gave one of them a post in the Croatian Army and a medal.

Mr. Tudjman is not immune to pressure from the West. When he was threatened with losing important loans, he persuaded one of the indicted Croats to turn himself over to the tribunal. Yet the United States, Germany and other European countries have squandered repeated chances to press him to restrain his and his allies' nationalism.

Mr. Tudjman and his party owe much to the West, which built up Croatia's military to fight the Serbs. Retired American soldiers trained Croatia's army. Washington has become more critical of Mr. Tudjman since 1995. With the war over it needed him less. In addition, his defiance of unfavorable election results and his attempts to control the press have grown more blatant.

But Croatia is still flooded with loans from international institutions.

Until the law was softened late last year, Washington was required to oppose such loans if Croatia harbored indicted war criminals. The United States never did so, but officials now are rightly threatening to block a major pending loan if Croatia does not turn over an indicted criminal it has arrested. This is welcome, but Washington can and should do more to persuade Mr. Tudjman to democratize, control the Mostar warlords and annoint a moderate successor.