Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said that Sljivancanin obviously wanted to shift the responsibility to others, adding however, that he would not succeed, because this claim was too naive for the tribunal to believe. "He, who is to blame and whose soldiers killed wounded people, killed our men at the hospital, cannot ask for any excuse, This a naive defence," Mesic told reporters.
Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said he had heard of this "stupid statement", adding that in his opinion Sljivancanin "attempted to shift responsibility to others by using a cheap trick". "We know that doctor Juraj Njavro and other Croatian doctors who were in the Vukovar hospital (at the time) are crown witnesses against Sljivancanin. Therefore one should smear the witness to remove the responsibility from oneself, but this will not stand," PM Sanader said.
Asked to comment on a document in possession of Banja Luka police which accuses Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian Defence Council (HVO) of taking part in war crimes in Bosnia, President Mesic said "I have no comment, because I have no information about that".
Parliament Speaker Vladimir Seks commented with one word: "Nonsense".
Officers of the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) - Veselin Sljivancanin, Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic - also known as the Vukovar Three, are charged by the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal with crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for their role in beatings and killings of Vukovar hospital patients at the Ovcara farm in November 1991.
In May 2002, Mile Mrskic flew to the Netherlands to surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal.
Sljivancanin was arrested by security forces in Belgrade in June 2003 after a 10-hour stand-off between police and his die-hard supporters and handed over to The Hague tribunal.
Radic gave himself up to the war crimes tribunal in 2002.