ZAGREB, May 7: A former Macedonian interior minister accused of ordering the murder of seven migrants (Six Pakistanis) in a bid to win Western approval for fighting "Islamic terrorism" is in Croatia, police in Croatia said on Friday.

But they added that under Croatian law they could not arrest and extradite Ljube Boskovski, who went missing on Tuesday, to Macedonia because he is also a Croatian citizen. Croatian authorities can only arrest and try citizens if they control the case.

"We cannot arrest him unless Macedonia allows Croatia to take over the case," Croatian police spokesman Zlatko Mehun told Reuters. "We have informed Macedonia of that but we have no reply so far."

Boskovski, a right-wing nationalist and interior minister in the former VMRO-DPMNE government who left office in 2002, has denied accusations that he ordered the murders. It was not immediately clear how Boskovski had travelled to Croatia. Mehun did not provide any details of his whereabouts.

Boskovski went missing on Tuesday, four days after Macedonia charged him and six former members of the security forces with murder. The Macedonian government has accused them of identifying a migrant group of six Pakistanis and one Indian, smuggling them into the country from Bulgaria, murdering them and altering the scene of the crime to make them appear as if they were armed Islamic militants infiltrating Europe.

Macedonia's Social Democrats defeated Boskovski's VMRO-DPMNE 18 months ago in an election and now control the interior ministry. The ambush occurred in March 2002, six months after the September 11 attacks in the United States. At the time Macedonia was recovering from a five-month ethnic conflict which almost ignited an all-out civil war with separatist Albanians.

The official version of events proffered by Macedonia's interior ministry, then headed by Boskovski, said three policemen had killed seven armed fighters in a rural area just north of the capital Skopje. The ministry also said at the time that the migrants had opened fire after they were ordered to stop. -Reuters