Fini said in the interview with the Split-based paper that Dalmatia, Istria and Rijeka "have always been Italian territory... this was Venetian soil, and before that Roman".
"We can be absolutely calm, this is certainly not the position of the official Italian policy," Sanader said answering a reporter's question at a news conference which he held after meeting the outgoing European Commissioner for Enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, in Zagreb this afternoon.
"We are familiar with such standpoints of certain political circles in Italy. We refute them completely," the PM said.
Sanader said that there was no reason for worry and added that it was well known that there were some irredentist circles in Italy claiming that Dalmatia and Istria were Italian.
The Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) parliamentary club of deputies asked the Foreign Ministry today to call Croatia's ambassador in Italy to Zagreb for consultations following Fini's claim. The HSP also demanded that Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul report to Parliament about Fini's claim and that Croatia forward a protest note to Brussels.
Fini was also quoted in the daily as saying that "in one period of the creation and development of (Croatia), the Croats didn't build and promote their right to their own roots and identity on the notion that others living in Croatia had the same rights". He added "the past century clearly showed that nationalism as a notion of one nation's superiority over others causes big disasters".
He went on to say that "naturally, nobody serious in present-day Italy is even thinking about returning the former territory on the east coast of the Adriatic to the Italian state. But it is our obligation within a Europe without borders, which already has 25 member states and which Croatia too will join in due time, to ensure respect for diversity, identity, and minorities that will think, speak and be educated freely in the language of their fathers and grandfathers. This is what we ask for Italians in Istria and Dalmatia".
This afternoon, the state secretary for political affairs at the Croatian Foreign Ministry, Hidajet Biscevic, called Italian Ambassador Alessandro Grafini to Zagreb for talks following Fini's interview.
Biscevic drew attention to some claims made by Fini "which clash with the spirit and substance of current Croatian-Italian relations," the ministry said in a press release. The press release said Biscevic and Ambassador Grafini concluded that Croatian-Italian relations were improving and that forthcoming bilateral meetings would focus on the settlement of concrete cooperation issues.
This afternoon, the Sabor's foreign affairs committee said that after Biscevic called the Italian ambassador for talks, it was now waiting for Italy to make the next step.
The committee's chairman, Goran Jandrokovic, added that the committee had been notified by Biscevic of the activities the Foreign Ministry had taken and that it supported them.