100,000 Croats Turn Out for Cortege of Leader With Tainted Image in West

This nation Monday laid to rest its first president, Franjo Tudjman--along with, many here hope, a decade of nationalist strife and frequent disregard for democracy, human rights and justice.

The authoritarian Tudjman’s tarnished legacy was apparent in a collective snub by Western democracies, which sent only ambassadors or mid-ranking officials to the burial of a European head of state.

But for hundreds of thousands of Croats, Tudjman remained until his death Friday at 77 a figure of heroic proportions, the leader who wrested a sovereign state from doomed Yugoslavia in 1991. It was the Croats’ first taste of independence in nearly a millennium.

An estimated 100,000 people turned out in a gray drizzle to line the route of Tudjman’s last journey, from the presidential palace to Mirogoj Cemetery, where several thousand more bade him farewell in a ritual with the military pomp and ceremony for which the onetime general was famous.

Church bells across the country tolled, sirens wailed and fighter jets flew over the burial ground in a final salute as the president’s coffin was entombed in a black granite crypt erected on the doorstep of the cemetery’s Christ the King Church.

“Even those who didn’t support him have had to admit his greatness today,” acting President Vlatko Pavletic proclaimed before the throng of mourners.

As Tudjman’s widow, Ankica, two sons, a daughter and half a dozen grandchildren stood by in composed silence, Pavletic used his eulogy to condemn ethnic Serbian enemies in neighboring Yugoslavia and cast domestic political opponents as betrayers of the national pride bestowed on Croats by their late leader.

Pavletic, who assumed presidential duties Nov. 26 when the ailing Tudjman was declared incapacitated, even alluded to Tudjman’s controversial claims that Serbs exaggerated the casualties they suffered at the hands of Croatia’s World War II fascist regime.

“It was a risk for which he paid dearly,” Pavletic noted, casting Tudjman as a brave deflator of “the great Serbian myth.”

Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic cited Pope John Paul II’s praise of Tudjman as a contributor to the defeat of godless communism a decade ago, but he also alluded to the widely criticized abuses of Tudjman’s nearly 10-year reign.

“For all the good Tudjman did, we express our deep gratitude and commend him to God for his reward,” Bozanic told mourners. “For his lesser sins, let them be forgiven.”

The foreign dignitaries who attended the funeral paid tribute to the Croatian people more than to their departed leader, although several noted that Tudjman’s devotion to his country should not be overlooked amid the harsh assessments of his later years.

“Tudjman was someone you may not have liked, and he was a man with whom we had many differences, but he believed in something,” U.N. envoy Jacques Klein said after the funeral. “He believed that after so many years of foreign dominance and occupation, Croatia deserved to be independent.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter W. Galbraith conceded that Tudjman left a “mixed legacy” but noted that he had sided with Western democracies in brokering the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Also breaking ranks with the collective decision by Western powers to stay away from Tudjman’s funeral was former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, whose support for Croatian independence led to European Union countries’ recognition of the new state in January 1992.

“I think Genscher and I are here for the same reason--because we both played significant parts in this history. We really came out of respect for the Croatian people,” said Galbraith, who served more than five years as ambassador here.

Tudjman’s death opens a power vacuum in this country of 4.8 million people, since even his own party, the Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, never groomed a successor. But with unemployment and poverty-level salaries afflicting all but the tiny elite made up of Tudjman’s political cronies, opposition parties are expected to break the HDZ monopoly on power after Jan. 3 parliamentary elections.

No date has yet been set for presidential elections to replace Tudjman, but they must be held within 60 days of his death. Foreign Minister Mate Granic, widely regarded as a genuine democrat, is expected to be the candidate fielded from the badly split HDZ against popular opposition leaders Ivica Racan and Drazen Budisa.

Some media in Zagreb, the capital, warned that the international community’s posthumous display of disapproval of the Tudjman regime might backfire by reinforcing Croats’ sense of isolation from Europe--a theme frequently used by HDZ hard-liners to justify their nationalist views.

“The absence of any important world leader could affect the result of the pending parliamentary and presidential polls,” wrote Jutarnji List columnist Davor Butkovic. “Such a demonstration of distaste for Tudjman will not only strengthen and unite the voting base of the HDZ, which is anti-European anyway, but may seriously affect those who are still undecided.”