There is such a possibility given that Perisic has been tried in absentia by a Croatian court and sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the Zadar hinterland, the minister told reporters in Zagreb on Tuesday during a visit to the Zagreb Trade Fair Centre.
On Monday Perisic, 61, flew from Belgrade to The Hague where he surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which charged him with 13 counts of persecution on political, religious and racial grounds, extermination, murder, inhumane acts, and attacks on civilians as crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.
The indictment covers the period from 26 August 1993 to 24 November 1998, when Perisic was Yugoslavia's military chief of staff. He was indicted on the basis of individual and command responsibility for the role of high-ranking Yugoslav Army officers serving in Bosnian and Croatian Serb forces in the siege and shelling of Sarajevo from 1993 to 1995, the May 1995 shelling of Zagreb, and the 1995 slaughter of Bosnian Muslims in the UN safe haven of Srebrenica.
Skare Ozbolt today reiterated that Croatia was doing its utmost to close the last remaining outstanding issue in its cooperation with the ICTY, notably to locate and arrest the runaway general Ante Gotovina.
Regarding the Perisic indictment, Croat and Bosniak citizens and leaders in Mostar on Tuesday expressed their disappointment with the tribunal's failure to indict Perisic for the 1992 shelling of that southern Bosnian city.
Mostar's war-time mayor, Milivoj Gagro, said he was surprised to see that the crimes in Mostar were left out of the indictment.
"Besides Zadar, Mostar is the city that suffered the greatest damage inflicted by the army led by General Perisic," Gagro said.
"About 700 people were killed in Mostar during the shelling when Perisic was the commander of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) troops in the area," said Mehmed Behman, a Social Democratic Party official, who was involved in the defence of Mostar.