"Gotovina is too intelligent to choose these countries as his hiding place," Mesic said in an interview with the Mostar weekly Danas, which was published on Thursday.
Mesic said that Croatia would overcome this final obstacle to starting membership talks with the European Union. "We must assure our friends that we have done everything in our power, absolutely everything, and that we are cooperating fully. And we cannot arrest Gotovina because he is not in Croatia".
Commenting on the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the position of the Croats there, Mesic said that the Bosnian Croats "do not have the right to be in an unequal position". "We do not want the Croats to be a constituent people in entire Bosnia-Herzegovina only on paper, but in reality. The Croats are not a minority, but an internationally recognised constituent element of Bosnia-Herzegovina," the president said.
Reiterating his well-known views that he was opposed to the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mesic said: "What would happen if the Serbs took their part and the Croats theirs? What would be left would be an Islamic statelet that would be able to rely only on forces outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, because it would be in a hostile environment. And the world cannot accept that."