"With regard to media reports saying that the President of the Republic of Croatia is lobbying for the abolishment of the entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we emphasise that the Dayton peace agreement was not discussed at any of the many meetings President Mesic had with foreign statesmen in New York," reads the statement.
The office of the Croatian president was reacting to claims by the Serb member of Bosnia-Herzegovina's collective state presidency, Borislav Paravac, who on Monday issued a statement accusing Mesic of advocating changes to the Dayton agreement and of "rude meddling into the internal affairs of a sovereign country".
Paravac said it was completely inappropriate and surprising for the head of one state to work intensively on changing the constitutional structure of another state, which he said was what President Mesic was doing in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week. Paravac also called on international representatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina to condemn such behaviour by the Croatian president.
President Mesic's office entirely dismissed Paravac's claims. "We cannot help feeling that the dissemination of untruths about President Mesic's visit to New York, where he attended the 60th session of the UN General Assembly, serves to cover up the key messages he issued on that occasion, that is, to divert public attention from those messages, which affirm Croatia as a responsible member of the international community with clearly defined positions on acute problems of the contemporary world," reads the statement signed by the head of President Mesic's public relations office, Danijela Barisic.