"The government must respond, because it is intolerable that someone should block roads and declare a piece of land as the territory of another country. If he wants to live in another country, he should sell his house and buy one where he wants to live," Mesic told reporters on Monday during his visit to Bol on the southern island of Brac.
Describing Joras as a "clown in somebody's service", Mesic recalled that the Badinter Commission had ruled that the borders of the former Yugoslav republics should be treated as the borders of the newly-established states, and that those borders were defined by the Yugoslav constitution of 1974.
"The land border is definitely settled and that's a fact. But it's also a fact that the sea borders have not been settled yet. These are facts and everything else is wishful thinking," the president said.
Mesic said that Croatia and Slovenia should resolve the problem of the sea border at the negotiating table and if they failed, the matter should be settled by arbitration.
Mesic said that occasional disputes did not affect relations with Slovenia. "Cooperation between Croatia and Slovenia is brilliant, and problems of that kind can be resolved and we will resolve them," the president said, adding that he had not discussed the Joras case with Slovene President Janez Drnovsek.
Joras, helped by four Slovene citizens, used wooden beams to block the Secovje border crossing in Slovenia last Saturday. Both this and the crossing at Plovanija on the Croatian side of the border were closed for about an hour and a half, which created a column of vehicles stretching for tens of kilometres.
The protesters blocked the road after a magistrate in the Croatian town of Umag had fined three of them 1,000 kuna each for illegally entering Croatia from Slovenia, transporting building timber, and for avoiding Croatian customs. The building material was intended for Joras.
Joras, who lives in the village of Mlini in the municipality of Buje near the border crossing with Slovenia, refuses to recognise Croatian sovereignty in the villages south of the Dragonja river.