CROATIA said yesterday that it had frozen the assets of General Ante Gotovina, No 3 on the most-wanted list of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. His case threatens to derail the country’s attempt to join the EU.

The move apparently came in response to widespread anger over the repeated and deliberate sabotaging by Croatian officials of efforts by Western intelligence services to find General Gotovina.

Information has been leaked from the Croatian Government, helping the general to remain at large. Britain has advised Croatia that it may wish to suspend its membership application to prevent a humiliating rebuff and resubmit it when progress has been made on arresting General Gotovina, an official told The Times.

Talks on Croatia’s application are due to start on Thursday but EU foreign ministers have indicated that they are reluctant to begin until General Gotovina surrenders or they are satisfied that Croatia is doing everything it can to find the officer, who has been on the run since his indictment for war crimes in 2001.

For most Croats General Gotovina remains a national hero of the “Homeland War”, when the country’s army, outnumbered and outgunned, paid a high price in blood for independence when large areas were occupied by the Serbs. General Gotovina, 49, commanded Operation Storm in August 1995, when Croatian forces, newly armed and trained by American advisers and private military contractors, recaptured almost all of Serb-occupied territory in three days. Tens of thousands of civilians fled their homes, at least 150 were killed and hundreds more disappeared, while Croatian forces plundered and looted at will.

The Croatians say that the West’s tough stand smacks of hypocrisy. Operation Storm had the support of the United States and Europe. Yet now Washington and Brussels are pressing Croatia to arrest their former ally for it.

General Gotovina is perhaps less important than the message sent out by his liberty. There are fears that if Croatia is allowed to commence

EU membership negotiations while he is at large, the tribunal’s two most-wanted suspects, the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic and the political leader Radovan Karadzic, will not be found as there will no longer be any means of exerting pressure on Belgrade to hand them over.

Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe, told The Times: “Britain is the No 1 supporter of Croatian EU membership. But as we approach the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the crimes committed ten years ago cannot be swept under the carpet.”

Meanwhile, Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo’s former Prime Minister, pleaded not guilty yesterday at the tribunal in The Hague to charges of murder, rape and deportation of Serbs during the 1998-99 war.

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