The Croatian media have linked the Croatian "Maxima" company, which is allegedly owned by a son of Social Democrats leader Ivica Racan, the husband of an advisor on anti-mine activity at the Foreign Ministry, Dijana Plestina, with the advertising campaign for the sixth conference of the Ottawa Convention signatories and the disputed poster featuring three Bosnian Serb amputees playing sitting handball in jerseys with "Republika Srpska" written on them.
The photograph is a work by Australian photographer John Rodsted and is part of the exhibition "Half Way", which describes the situation in formerly war-affected areas in the region ten years ago and today.
Plestina thanked all donors, including "a small company owned by my stepson", which helped organise the conference free of charge. She said the list of all donors would be made public soon.
The disputed photograph and the poster displayed at the Zagreb conference "disappeared 15 minutes before the news conference", said Plestina, adding that she did not know where the two items were.
Vanja Sikirca, representative of the Norwegian People's Assistance (NPA), a non-profit anti-mine organisation from Oslo operating in Croatia, which organised the photo exhibition, told media representatives they could obtain the photo in digital form.
John Rodsted told Hina on Thursday that the controversial photo had been taken at an international sitting handball tournament held in a village near the central Bosnian town of Zenica in the summer of 2005. The tournament was attended by representatives from the Bosnian Serb entity, Croatia and the Croat-Muslim Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Visible on the photo are also the flags of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.
Asked whether she would resign as requested by the Association of Croatian Disabled War Veterans over the poster, Plestina said she would not.