But Serbs Jewish groups and many historians say the figure was in the hundreds

But Serbs, Jewish groups and many historians say the figure was in the hundreds of thousands, and was comparable to Hitler’s own concentration camps inside Germany and Nazi-occupied territory.Sakic was 21 when he took control of Jasenovac in 1942 under the Nazi- backed Ustashe government of Croatia. His lawyer said he would not fight extradition and would base his defence on the epidemic argument.His wife, Nada, also said by Holocaust survivors to have taken part in exterminations, has not been detained by the Argentinians.Sakic and his wife had lived unnoticed in Argentina for 51 years but he stunned his neighbours in the Atlantic coastal resort of Santa Teresita last month by revealing his fascist past in a television interview. He said for the first time that he had been commander of Jasenovac, about 50 miles south of the Croatian capital Zagreb from 1942 until 1944, when Croatia was a Nazi puppet state set up by Hitler as a buffer against communism.Under pressure from his country’s powerful Jewish community, who have criticised the presence of ex-Nazis in the past, the Argentinian President, Carlos, Menem ordered his arrest.Croatia admits that tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and gypsies were exterminated at Jasenovac. Frankfurt as well as the politicians on both sides of Bonn’s parliamentary divide blame President Chirac, and are openly contemptuous of his “pursual of French national interests at all cost”.How Chancellor Kohl feels about the weekend’s events is somewhat less relevant, given the prospect of his imminent retirement, thanks partly to his friends in Paris. But the high-handed way in which he was treated at the weekend is seen as an affront to all of Germany: a grudge to be borne by his successors.The infamy of Brussels is thus set to mark a turning-point. The Franco- German axis, more of a myth than a fact since the departure of Francois Mitterrand, is about to snap..

IT WAS more than half a century later and a continent away but Dinko Sakic’s leer was the same. His alleged victims – Jews, Serbs and gypsies – went to their deaths watching that same twisted smile on the face of their concentration camp commander. As his neighbours booed and jeered, Sakic, 76, pulled the derisory smile for photographers in Argentina when he was arrested last week on suspicion of war crimes. He is expected to be extradited to his native Croatia shortly to face trial in connection with tens of thousands of deaths at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp.
Sakic admits he ran Jasenovac but insists that no one was exterminated and that the victims merely fell sick “They died from an epidemic of typhoid There were no cremation ovens,” he stated. Another family squabble can, perhaps, be concealed this time from peeping neighbours, but the damage has been done.The minority of the German media that remain loyal to Mr Kohl speak of “long-term scars” to the special relationship between France and Germany.Francophiles in the Chancellor’s entourage feel betrayed: the strategy of a common front with France on all major issues of European integration has been fatally undermined by the French.The mighty Bundesbank, which has grudgingly turned a blind eye to French accounting tricks in the past, will not forget this.

The impression that he allowed himself to be bulldozed aside by the French President will certainly linger till election day.It is with this in mind that the Chancellor must defend himself today in front of an emergency debate in the Bundestag, and then put on his smiling face for the meeting in Avignon with Brother Jacques. It matters little what currency traders do between now and September, when the Chancellor goes to the country for a fifth term. “The next breach of the treaty is pre-programmed.”When the Bundesbank worries, German voters reach for the Prozac. Though the money markets took the debacle in their stride, Germany’s angst-ridden money-men are despondent.”The government heads have already named the successor [to Duisenberg] and this is a breach of the [Maastricht] Treaty,” lamented Klaus-Dieter Kuhbacher, a member of the all-powerful Bundesbank Council.

He was, he admitted, “extremely annoyed” with the horse-trading but did not consider the outcome dishonourable. Election posters saluting the “stable euro” under Mr Kohl’s benevolent gaze were still prominently displayed outside Christian Democrat headquarters yesterday.
The “little family row” in Brussels, a senior CDU politician predicted, would be forgotten, perhaps, in five years. In the interim, the party must fight an uphill election battle on the EMU “achievement” without drawing too much attention to the humiliation just meted out to its chief architect.”Helmut Kohl has certainly been damaged by this,” admitted Theo Waigel, the Finance Minister. Wim Duisenberg, in contrast, is an emaciated 62-year-old who clearly could not be expected to soldier on for eight years as head of the European Central Bank. This, in essence, is the disingenuous line the German Chancellor has found himself selling since his return from Brussels.

BONN – At what age are international statesmen over the hill? Helmut Kohl, 68 years young and fresh from a slimming course, is trying to persuade German voters he has another four years in him. Mr Chirac calculated he had no need to please the old man any more.Almost exactly a year after Mr Chirac shot himself in the foot by calling an early general election, the French (Socialist) European Affairs Minister, Pierre Moscovici, is reported to have commented, snidely: “Chirac put the left in power in France in 1997; he’s going to put the social democrats in power in Germany in 1998.”. It will, it seems, be up to a new generation of politicians to solve this puzzle.One lesson is that the French establishment has written off Mr Kohl. But there is a difference between rubbing along, with periodic bursts of tension, and getting on well. How effectively Paris and Bonn work together is crucial to a series of decisions in the next few years on the running of the single currency and enlargement of the EU to the east (potentially the biggest of all sources of Franco-German tension). Both countries are inescapably committed to the EU and therefore to one another.