Last Saturday Italy commemorated the victims of the foibe massacres and persecutions of Italians by the former Yugoslav regime during and in the wake of World War II, while President Giorgio Napolitano presented decorations to the families of 30 victims, including the last Italian chief of police of the central coastal city of Zadar, Vincenzo Serrentino, who was shot by the Partisans.
A renovated memorial site was inaugurated in Basovizza near Trieste, the location of the biggest foiba, karst pits into which, according to Italian media, many innocents were thrown towards the end of World War II by Tito's Partisans.
Presenting the decorations, Napolitano said the drama of the Giulian-Dalmatian people had been caused by the "Slavic bloodthirsty hatred and rage".
"These claims, in which one cannot but see elements of open racism, historical revisionism and political revenge-seeking, are definitely difficult to put side by side with the declared wish for the promotion of bilateral relations," the Office of the Croatian President said in a statement.
Napolitano said that the Slavic annexationist claims tipped the scales especially in the 1947 Peace Treaty and acquired the ominous outlines of ethnic cleansing.
"The President of the Republic believes that questioning the Peace Treaty that was signed by Italy in 1947 is appalling and potentially very dangerous. Does anyone need to be reminded what the harangue against the peace treaty from Versailles, which ended the First World War, had triggered off?", the statement reads.
In an interview with a Trieste daily last month, President Mesic provoked fierce protests by admitting that the Partisans were responsible for the foibe massacres, but that those crimes had happened after the crimes committed by Italian fascist forces against Croat inhabitants of Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia.
The paper Il Piccolo interpreted the statement as admission that the foibe massacres were an act of revenge and not the systematic expulsion of Italians from Croatian areas, as claimed by the daily.
"President Mesic has made it very clear on several occasions lately that individual crimes committed by the winners during and in the aftermath of WWII should be condemned," the statement reads.
President Mesic has advocated taking into account the wider historical context and opposed the concealing of facts, as well as the transformation of historical losers into historical winners, the statement said.
"The Republic of Croatia believes that any attempt to question the Osimo Accords, signed by Yugoslavia and Italy and taken over by the Republic of Croatia as one of the successors to the former federation, is absolutely unacceptable," the statement read.
President Mesic strongly believes that the two countries should build friendly relations, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of Europe which is uniting, the statement read.
President Mesic also believes that it is necessary to protest against any attempt to question, on any excuse, the pillars on which united Europe is being built and among which anti-fascism holds a prominent place".