ZADAR, Croatia — Amid the roadside billboards advertising hotels and restaurants along this idyllic coastline, a series of signs have sprung up showing a man in Croatian military uniform.

The signs bear slogans, written in Croatian, pronouncing, "All for one, one for all," "No sale, no surrender" and "Hero, not a criminal." There is a poster of the man kissing Pope John Paul II's hand during an audience in Croatia in the mid-1990s.

While the billboards may baffle the tens of thousands of tourists visiting the region later this summer, they make perfect sense to most Croats.

The soldier is Ante Gotovina, a former general in the Croatian Army who is regarded as a hero by many people in this country, but who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague.

Almost four years after a warrant for his arrest was issued, Gotovina is still on the run, one of the United Nations tribunal's three most wanted men. The 48-year-old retired general is wanted in connection with the deaths of at least 150 ethnic Serbs during the final stages of Croatia's 1991-95 war. More crucially for this nation, his freedom has become the main stumbling block for possible membership in the European Union.

On March 16, a day before negotiations on EU membership were due to start, the Union's foreign ministers postponed the talks until Zagreb was able to prove "full cooperation" with the tribunal - to show it was making serious attempts to track down and arrest Gotovina.

While hardline views are not difficult to find in this region, one that suffered heavily during the war with Serbia, the posters represent a worrying trend for a government that has made EU membership a top priority since coming to power in December 2003. Many Croats apparently see the general's handover as too high a price to pay for membership.

"If I could help him I definitely would," said Sladjana Skilic, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in Pakustane, a seaside fishing village outside Zadar where the Gotovina family has a summer house. "I love the man more than the European Union."

A middle-aged fisherwoman agreed. "The EU means nothing to me," she said, declining to give her name. "It's not worth sacrificing a general."

A survey conducted by the group Puls before mid-March on behalf of the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb indicated that similar sentiments are held across the country. The results, which have not been published but have been shown to the International Herald Tribune, show that 39 percent of respondents "completely disagree" that it is in Croatia's interest to extradite Gotovina to the tribunal at The Hague; 15 percent, the poll indicated, "mostly disagree." The telephone poll of 1,500 people had a margin of error of 2.8 percent.

Two less scientific phone-in polls conducted by television programs showed even harder attitudes, with 90 percent to 95 percent of callers indicating that they would prefer Gotovina to remain at large even if that meant not joining the Union.

The belief among many nationalists is that in seeking Gotovina's arrest, the tribunal and the international community are implying that Croatia's war for independence was morally tainted.

The tribunal has charged Gotovina with being part of a "joint criminal enterprise" to force Serbs out of Croatia and with failing to take action against those who committed war crimes under his command. Along with the killings, he is accused of orchestrating the expulsion in 1995 of 150,000 Serbs from land they seized in the early 1990s.

EU diplomats say that Croatia's government, wary of alienating its nationalist supporters, has tried to dodge the issue of Gotovina's arrest as the deadline for EU negotiations approached.

The head of the European Commission's delegation in Croatia, Jacques Wunenburger, said the government had expended far more effort lobbying European capitals than it had on measures to track down and arrest Gotovina.

"I hope the government will change the strategy, because lobbying itself will not bring about EU membership talks," Wunenburger said at a news conference in Zagreb last month.

President Stipe Mesic and other members of the Croatian government contend that Gotovina is no longer in the country. Mesic has quipped that he is probably in Paraguay.

Western officials here say the government can prove it is fully cooperating with the tribunal only through credible intelligence-led operations to track down the general. No such operations have taken place since August, they said, adding that Gotovina's supporters are firmly established in Croatia's intelligence and police services and need to be removed.

One political analyst said the task appeared to be even more difficult because of the criticism coming out of various EU governments.

"My fear is that there is a growing 'Euroskepticism' in Croatia because the political elite have failed to explain what is beneficial, both when dealing with war crimes and upholding the rule of law, and explaining the benefits of EU membership," said Nenad Zakosek, a professor of politics at Zagreb University.

In Pakustane, such Euroskepticism appears deep-rooted.

"Switzerland can do without the European Union," said Skilic, the shopkeeper, "so why can't we as well."