Eurasia Press & News
Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said that the most contentious points in Serbian-Croatian relations are a border issue and problems related to the wartime and post-war period.
Josipovic, said that the border problem with Serbia was not as big as the one with Slovenia and that it would be easier to solve “by implementing certain criteria.”
The president stressed that the status of Croatian citizens of Serb ethnicity who fled to Serbia during the war must be resolved.
“They have a right to return, just as they have a right to their property,” he said stressing that whether some policies are protecting those people’s interests or merely exploit the issue was another question.
Speaking about Kosovo, Josipovic said that the question of relations between Serbia and Kosovo was not Croatia’s concern and that Croatia was not able nor willing to influence Belgrade-Pristina relations.
Relations between Serbia and Croatia became tense recently after Serbia filed a countersuit at the International Court of Justice, ICJ, on January 4, 2010 against Croatia for genocide allegedly committed against Serbs during the war in the 90s and World War II.
The suit was a response to Croatian charges of genocide against Serbia filed at the ICJ in 1999, demanding that Belgrade punish all perpetrators of war crimes, return cultural property to Croatia and pay for war damages.
The ICJ has set a deadline of December 20, 2010, for Croatia to submit its response to Serbia’s genocide countersuit and then a deadline of November 2011 for Serbia to reply to Croatia’s response.
Commenting on this, Josipovic said that Croatia was exposed to aggression and that it continued to suffer the consequences of that aggression.
“The issue of responsibility for war crimes should not be circumvented. One of the reasons for our genocide lawsuit was precisely that Serbia would not even discuss responsibility for war crimes,” he said, but noted that “this has now changed”.
