"Once the action plan proposed by the prime minister is carried out, I think the situation between us and The Hague will be quite different," Mesic told reporters in Zagreb on the margins of a conference on the role of the media in the transition countries of Southeast Europe.
The purpose of the plan is to ensure full cooperation with the Hague tribunal by resolving the case of fugitive general Ante Gotovina as soon as possible, and Mesic said that Croatia would take all the necessary steps it had failed to take before in order to achieve this goal.
The European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, said in an interview with the Zagreb-based Vecernji List daily that the plan would take "a long, long time" to implement, but that it was "a step in the right direction".
"It is a step in the right direction, but it is yet to be implemented and its results are yet to be seen. In principle, we think that this plan, if implemented correctly, may show some results," Solana said after the meeting of the EU task force, which has been set up to evaluate whether Croatia is fully cooperating with the Hague tribunal.
Full cooperation with the Hague tribunal is the condition set by the EU for opening membership talks with Croatia. The talks were due to have begun on March 16, but were delayed over Croatia's failure to track down the fugitive general and hand him over to the Hague tribunal.
Responding to the question about the likelihood of the membership talks being delayed again, Mesic said that Croatia should not be concerned about dates and that he believed that the country would manage to restore its credibility over a short period of time and that the talks would start.
Asked to comment on the statement by Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte that General Gotovina was hiding in Croatia, Mesic said that he would like to have the information the chief prosecutor had.
"Both the prime minister and I receive information from the same sources. We are confident that all the usual measures have been taken, the measures permitted by law. It is on the basis of that information that we claim that General Gotovina is not in Croatia, according to the information we have. But if Carla del Ponte has different information, it would be good if she shared it with us," the Croatian president said.
"I think Ante Gotovina should not have allowed to be placed in the same context with (Bosnian Serb wartime leaders) Mladic and Karadzic, because he is a different kind of person, and the setting in which General Gotovina operated was also different. That is why I have always thought he will realise the situation he is in, the situation Croatia is in, and that he will answer questions (from the prosecutors)," he added. "That is what I expected from him and what I still do."
Mesic was speaking on the margins of the conference "15 Years of Transition in Southeast Europe: The Responsibility and Influence of the Media", organised by the Zagreb office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
In his address to the conference, Mesic underlined the importance of professionalism in the media sector.
The foundation, named after the first postwar chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, promotes peace, freedom and justice. It is currently implementing more than 200 projects in over 120 countries. The Zagreb office promotes the development of democracy in Croatia and supports the country's efforts to join the European Union and NATO.