President Stjepan Mesic said on Tuesday the discovery of audio and video recordings of a 1995 meeting at Brijuni isles confirmed the authenticity of the meeting's transcripts.
The transcripts referred to a 31 July 1995 meeting the then Croatian president, the late Franjo Tudjman, held with top military brass on Brijuni isles on the eve of Operation Storm, which liberated parts of Croatian territory occupied by rebel Serbs.
Mesic was speaking to the press in Rijeka, where he attended the 60th anniversary of the northern Adriatic city's liberation from occupation.
He said he did not know what the confirmation of authenticity would mean to the Hague war crimes tribunal and that the UN court would be the one to decide about that.
Mesic said that for Croatia, the confirmation of authenticity would mean that it was fully cooperating because "we have given the tribunal every document that has been requested".
Commenting on the alleged formation of pro-Nazi youth associations in Rijeka and Pula, Mesic said that was the result of 1990s brainwashing, when he said that textbooks had been forged and replete with incorrect information. He added it was to be expected of the young to have a distorted view of the Second World War and retrograde ideas.
Asked to comment on the fact that former Socialist Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito was still so highly regarded, Mesic said that was due to the way Tito had led the antifascist struggle, thus creating the conditions for the establishment of present-ay Croatia.