Asked whether Croatia had a chance of receiving an unconditional date for the start of EU entry talks, Mesic said he believed that the start of talks would be conditional considering the current circumstances. "But this does not mean that we cannot meet those conditions in a short period of time."
During his meeting with pensioners, Mesic said that the state's debt to pensioners could be returned by establishing a fund into which dividend of the most profitable companies would be paid by transferring the state ownership of the companies onto the fund.
During the meeting with the town leadership, Mesic said that Adriatic countries should hold a conference to agree on the protection of the Adriatic Sea. He reiterated that if Croatia walked out of the Druzba Adria project, the project could be moved, for example, to Trieste. "Will we then be able to influence the routes to be used by oil tankers on their way to Trieste, or ballast waters or protection of the Adriatic. These are some of the questions which need to be answered before we say 'yes' or 'no' to the project," Mesic said.
Asked whether it was true that the National Security Council would give the Hague UN war crimes tribunal all available documents on war and other events in Croatia, Mesic said that Croatia was bound by its constitutional law on cooperation with the ICTY to provide the tribunal with all information which can help shed light on the war.
"To what extent something benefits or harms an individual is not up to us to decide, it is up to courts, domestic courts and the court in The Hague. We are interested in the truth."
Asked to comment on presidential candidate Slaven Letica's statement that a car from the President's Office was used in the kidnapping of General Vladimir Zagorac's son, Mesic said that "a car from the President's Office was involved in the kidnapping as much as Letica was".
Speaking about his presidential campaign, which will start tomorrow, Mesic said that it would cost some four million kuna. Asked about the financing of his last campaign, Mesic said that he was the only candidate who had the funds used in his campaign audited and that the audit revealed no irregularities.
President Mesic also visited the newest Croatian municipality of Kamanje near the border with Slovenia, which has a zero percent unemployment rate.
(EUR1 = 7.5 kuna)