ZAGREB, July 13 (Hina) - As in the past two days, world news agencies covered Israeli President Moshe Katsav's three-day trip to Croatia also on Sunday, when he visited Jasenovac, the site of a WWII concentration camp where thousands
of Jews, Serbs, Roma, and anti-fascist Croats lost their lives under the Ustasha regime.
ZAGREB, July 13 (Hina) - As in the past two days, world news agencies
covered Israeli President Moshe Katsav's three-day trip to Croatia
also on Sunday, when he visited Jasenovac, the site of a WWII
concentration camp where thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma, and anti-
fascist Croats lost their lives under the Ustasha regime. #L#
Reuters, DPA, and AFP highlight the fact that Katsav is the first
Israeli president to visit Croatia since the country declared
independence in 1991 and Israel recognised it a year later.
Reuters and France Press note that relations between the two
countries in the last decade were cold due to Israel 's view of
former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's statements as anti-
Semitic. Among other things, Tudjman disputed that several hundred
thousand people were killed at the Jasenovac camp.
Citing independent historians, Reuters says 80,000 were killed
there, including about 13,000 Jews.
The news agencies also report that Mesic and Katsav jointly laid
wreaths at the Jasenovac memorial site. They attribute the
improvement of Israeli-Croatian relations to Mesic who, Reuters
says, made a ground-breaking visit to Israel in October 2001 and
apologised for the crimes committed by Croatia's WWII puppet
regime.
(hina) ha sb