The statement, signed by the ministry's spokesman Dobroslav Silobrcic, reads that, although it was not authorised, Jutarnji List cited a classified document which has identified some media that contain "misinterpretations or tendentious conclusions".
In this context the ministry highlights "the responsibility of the media for accurate, full and not politicised information",
The ministry also regards different positions towards NATO as "understandable and legitimate", and it also is trying to offer to the public "all relevant information so as to remove ignorance and incorrect or politically-coloured remarks and comments".
On Tuesday the Jutarnji List daily cited a text, compiled by the Ministry's analytical department, which, according to the paper, was on 17 November sent to over 70 addresses, including the offices of the Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, and a series of Croatian diplomatic offices abroad, such as the embassies in Turkey and Germany and permanent missions to the UN and NATO in New York and Brussels respectively.
The text reads that it is no news that the negative attitude which a majority of Croatians, covered by opinion polls, express with regard to Croatia's plans to join NATO could be interpreted as a result of "an orchestrated anti-NATO campaign" whose main protagonists were journalists, namely the would-be national intelligentsia".
The text, compiled by diplomat Darko Bekic with the approval of the said department's chief, Mario Horvatic, was, according to the daily, prompted by critical comments on a Brijuni meeting of foreign ministers of Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, signatories with the US to the US-Adriatic Charter, as well as on the memorandum which regulates the American use of Croatian civilian and military facilities. The articles were written in November by columnists of the Jutarnji List and another two dailies Slobodna Dalmacija and Vjesnik, the Jutarnji reported.