The minister's request ensued after recent media reports about some 80 Lippizaner horses starving to the death at the Novo Naselje farm in the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
The Croatian ministry recalls that the problem of transferring back those horses to their original stud farm in Croatia is not yet solved.
In 1991, Mihajlo Komasovic, who worked for the stud farm in Lipik, transferred horses from Lipik via Bosnia to Serbia. He claimed that he had wanted to save the thoroughbred animals from the war.
In 2004, officials of the Croatian and Serbian agriculture ministries reached agreement on transferring back those Lippizaner horses to Lipik.
However, Todor Bukinac, the owner of the Novo Naselje farm, did not accept the terms of the agreement as he had insisted on being reimbursed for keeping the horses on his farm.
Minister Cobankovic has written to the Serbian Minister Slobodan Milosavljevic to warn him about inhumane treatment of the horses at that farm in Vojvodina.
We believe that it is your duty to carry out an inspection to establish the real state of affairs regarding the treatment of those horses and in case of the negligence, to take appropriate measures to ensure good conditions for keeping and feeding those animals, Cobankvic wrote in the letter.
The Croatian minister proposed a meeting in a bid to find a solution of this problem.
The Novi Sad-based Gradjanski List paper has recently carried a story about the neglected animals.
"The herd of underfed horses the newspaper crew has seen at the Novo Naselje farm seem to be left to shift for themselves. At the temperature of 40 centigrade, about 50 through-bred horses that are now skin and bones, eat what they find. Some of them have open wounds that have not been treated," the local paper reported.