Croatia is the latest must-visit for European holiday-makers. But behind the friendly face of the new Croatia lie rivalries and dark secrets which will not go away, writes

The Balkan wars of the 1990s are long over. These days, it's not Serbian armies invading the long strip of Balkan coastline which is Croatia but tourists from northern Europe.

With its empty beaches, spectacular island-strewn coastline and atmospheric village life, the attraction of Croatia is obvious.

Other former warring Yugoslav countries are making their peace with Europe and each other. Slovenia is part of the European Union, Bosnia is an EU protectorate, Serbia is gradually adopting normal democratic politics and Montenegro ? despite still being unified with Serbia ? even uses the Euro as its official currency.

Croatia is also modernising quickly. The tin-pot dictatorship of the wartime president, Dr. Franjo Tudjman, has been replaced by a functioning democracy.

The economy is growing, tourism is booming and Croat society is even more westernised and cosmopolitan than it was under Tito.

The public image locals like to present is of plucky little Croatia, the victim invaded and ravaged by enemies in the war but now ever-vigilant to protect its independence.

There is much truth to the image but it also hides an implacable unwillingness to confront the murky role of its armed forces during Europe's only war since 1945.

Only now, ten years after the last shells were fired, is the rest of Europe losing its patience with Croatian attempts to ignore history.

Earlier this summer, led by the British government, the EU put Croatia's bid to join the Union on hold until President Stjepam Mesic hands over alleged war criminal General Ante Gotovina for trial at the UN's international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Then, on September 19, a small bomb exploded at the British embassy in Zagreb, the capital.

Days later, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, accused the Catholic church of shielding Gotovina in a Franciscan monastery.

This was a major raise in the stakes in what is probably the most devoutly Catholic country in Europe and one where the church has a dubious track record in helping Nazis and fascist Ustashi milita members to evade justice after 1945.

The government's refusal to hand over Gotovina reflects the view of the ordinary voter, who does not think the country has any apologies to make for the war, a opinion which will only be strengthened by the recent EU climb-down and offer to start accession talks.

That the offer resulted from a sordid compromise, whereby Austria dropped its opposition to accession talks with Turkey in return for talks with Croatia, will be seen by Croats as a successful political power-play.

The walled city of Dubrovnik dominates southern Dalmatia, as it has done since the Middle Ages, when it was the most powerful city state in the Adriatic.

In 1991, the city withstood a fearsome siege from sea and land by the Serbs and Montenegrins of the rump Yugoslav army and various bands of cut-throat ethnic militias.

The siege defined the final collapse of Yugoslavia, but the cost of victory was huge. Virtually every building in the city, including churches, museums and homes were destroyed or heavily damaged during the siege, along with more than 800 vehicles and 750 boats.

An estimated 14,000 shells were fired into Dubrovnik and and its modern suburbs and more than 33,000 refugees flooded into the city from the surrounding areas.

The evidence of the attacks is everywhere. Dubrovnik is largely restored but the ferries to and from Cavtat go past four hotels now reduced to blasted-out shells by the Serbian navy.

The wall of one hotel clearly shows the result of direct hit by a missile ? ironically, the hotel was reserved exclusively for the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army before the war.

The successful rebuilding of Dubrovnik has become a symbol of the new Croatia ? bright, brash, European and confident in its own identity, says Romeo, a tour guide from Cavtat, a small city on the Montenegrin border.

Romeo, just into adulthood in 1991, fought the Montenegrin army when it attacked nearby Dubrovnik airport, finally retreating to take part in the defence of Dubrovnik.

"We were the innocent ones. We were invaded by the Serbs and the soldiers from Montenegro and later by the Bosnian Muslims. We defended our country and drove them out. They won't come back," he says, adding somewhat debatably: "We're all friends now."

On the face of it, the Croats are the blameless victims who fought through to victory. But their claims to victimhood and professions of friendship towards former enemies ring a little hollow on closer inspection.

There are few Muslims or Serbs living in Croatia, which is now probably the most homogeneous population in Europe, thanks to the ethnic cleansing of both the north and south of the country.

Gotovina is accused of murdering 150 Serbs and displacing 150,000 others in the north-western Krajina region in 1995.

Romeo and his friends say the Serbs and Muslims fled to safety during the war, as civilians do, and are welcome to return. Few, if any, have done so.

There are other indications of Croatian triumphalism, all subtle but clear enough for Muslims in particular to get the message.

A bus trip to Mostar, 40 miles from the coast, takes you past British troops clearing Serbian minefields into the heart of post-war Bosnia, now an EU protectorate where the word of former British Liberal Party leader Lord Ashdown is law.

During the 1990s, the war went backwards and forwards both politically and geographically. Serbia fought Bosnia, devastating Mostar and the surrounding countryside.

The Serbs were driven out of southern Croatia by a Croat army which then invaded Bosnia and won the battle for Mostar.

For centuries under the Muslim Ottoman empire, Mostar was a major trading centre famous for the Stari Most, a beautiful medieval brick bridge spanning the river Neretva.

The Serbs shelled the bridge to destruction out of pure malice. The Stari Most reopened last year, recreated by internationally-funded Italian engineers using many of the original bricks, retrieved by local men from the bottom of the Neretva.

Its restoration has been a sign to Muslims that a normal peaceful life might be within reach.

There are more tourists every year, learning about the old way of life in the Turkish House, the restored home of a 19th century Muslim merchant, and buying relics of the war and the old Yugoslavia at shabby street stalls, an old Austro-Hungarian imperial medal here, a Yugoslav colonel's cap badge or a used cartridge for an AK47 there.

Ahmed, an educated local Muslim, says things are looking up and professes to get on with his Croat neighbours now: "I was too young for the war and we have to live with them."

Push him, though, and it's clear that not only do Muslims remember who lost the war but that the Croats make sure the memory of defeat is ever-present.

"Just look which bank of the river has been restored best," he says. And it's true: the rebuilt Christian side with its imposing cathedral and busy restaurants and bars contrast with the miserable poverty of the shell-battered main street in the Muslim quarter, where ground-floor living is often a necessity because the first floor of a building still has no roof.

Most obvious of all, however, is the giant war memorial on top of the mountain behind Mostar, on the site from where Croatian artillery battered the Muslims to defeat.

The memorial is a massive steel cross, a Christian religious symbol overlooking a mainly Muslim city. "We see it every day. We're never allowed to forget," says Ahmed.

There is no doubt who won the war but there is also no doubt that Croatia still has to come to terms with the peace.

@EDITRULE: