Andrija Hebrang, who on Monday visited the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, was asked by reporters to comment on the start of the trial of a former Bosnian Croat leader and former member of Bosnia's collective presidency, Ante Jelavic, and other former high-ranking local Croat officials accused of having embezzled funds which Zagreb had sent via Herzegovacka bank in assistance to Bosnian Croats. Lawyers for the defendants have announced plans to call as defence witnesses some Croatian senior officials from 1995 to 2001, in which context the names of Hebrang and former Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa and Defence Minister Pavao Miljavac were mentioned.
"We respect the independence of the judiciary of Bosnia-Herzegovina and we shall recognise all that this court will decide," Hebrang told reporters.
The Croatian minister also commented on frequent accusations against Zagreb for neglecting Bosnian Croats and on a recent suggestion of Sarajevo Archbishop Cardinal Vinko Puljic that Croatia draw up a strategy for assistance to Bosnian Croats.
Denying accusations of Zagreb's negligence of Bosnian Croats as groundless, Hebrang also refuted objections that the Croatian government had no strategy for helping Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"I refute objections that we have no strategy as I am personally one of the authors of that strategy about which we don't talk much, but this document is operational," Hebrang said, adding the strategy in question had three directions: economic, humanitarian and political so as to help Bosnian Croats to remain an equal and constituent people in Bosnia.
Commenting on a statement by Bosnian Ministerial Council chairman Adnan Terzic that Bosnia would not allow the sale of a children's hospital in the Croatian coastal town of Cavtat, Hebrang said briefly that Croatia and Bosnia were friendly countries which would agree on the said hospital.