President Mesic said in a statement that in spring 1993 he had been called to attend a meeting at President Franjo Tudjman's office, where Tudjman told him, among other things, that he had travelled to Split by ferry from Rijeka because of enemy attacks on Maslenica.
"President Tudjman told me that we had suffered great losses at Maslenica and mentioned 185 soldiers. He was probably thinking of the entire Zadar hinterland, while I was thinking of Maslenica," Mesic said.
Mesic said that the government's public relations office today issued a statement saying that 112 soldiers had been killed in the operation, which he said definitely denied the official figure mentioned until now, namely 22 victims.
"I once again regret having caused dilemmas with my statement and I want to state that the lives of each of those victims were built into the foundations of the Croatian state and are holy to me," Mesic said in the statement.
The government's public relations office said in a statement that 112 soldiers had been killed in Operation Maslenica from January 22, 1993, when the operation started, to March 31, 1993, when the situation on the front lines stabilised. It also said that 208 soldiers had been killed in combat operations in the Zadar area in 1993.
In a statement to Croatian Radio on April 25, President Mesic said that Operation Maslenica had claimed the lives of 185 soldiers, that it had been poorly prepared and that it had not "moved us forward an inch". Mesic's statement was strongly condemned by veterans' associations, which demanded that he apologise.