"I am not in favour of blaming a group. I believe that each person should be charged with what he really did, and that is why I find this kind of amending not quite acceptable," Mesic told reporters in the eastern city of Osijek after touring the grounds where an international trade fair would open on Wednesday.
The president said he believed that the amended indictment would not strengthen radical political groups in Croatia, adding that court proceedings would show if someone was guilty nor not.
Asked to comment on his decision to reduce the prison sentence for Serb war criminal Nikola Dragusin from 20 to 19 years at the proposal of the Commission for Pardons, Mesic said that his decision had not prompted reactions from the public other than those from his "usual critics".
"The Commission for Pardons gathers the necessary information to determine if there are grounds for pardon requests and takes into account circumstances which were not known to the courts at the time of sentencing. My critics are responding to the fact that a Serb has had his sentence reduced by one year, and if they think that Serbs should not be pardoned, let them say so," the president said.
Mesic added that pardon was "an act of mercy which is always possible in any democratic country" and that he never discriminated against citizens for their religious or ethnic background or for what they had done, because "that is done by courts which mete out sentences".
Asked to comment on the posthumous awarding of a US medal to Chetnik Movement leader Draza Mihailovic, the president said that there was no reason "to give an award to a quisling who led a criminal movement" and that it was "a big mistake".
"The decision to award a medal to Draza Mihailovic was made at the time of the Cold War. The Chetniks collaborated with Nazifascists and committed grave crimes against civilians in World War Two," he added.
Mihailovic was awarded a Medal of Merit for saving 500 US airmen whose planes were shot down over Serbia in 1944. Mesic said that Chetniks had not killed the Americans "probably for speculative reasons".