CRO. PRESIDENT: CHANGE OF POLICIES MORE IMPORTANT THAN APOLOGY

BELGRADE, June 24 (Hina) - Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said in an interview to a Belgrade weekly, "Reporter", that the path to solving the Croatia-Serbia relations was the individualisation of guilt for the suffering and the establishment of communications between the two countries. #L# Asked whether he would apologise to Serbs as he had, for example, apologised to Israel for crimes committed by the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), Mesic said: "Certainly. I must say that the issue of apologising is a moral act. Nobody demanded of Willy Brandt to apologise." At the same time, Croatia's head of state said that "one should not insist on an apology, but on the change of policies". Mesic condemned all crimes committed during attempts to create both a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia. "I believe that we first need to open communication between the two peoples and countries, and an apology would follow on its own," Mesic said. Asked to comment on the result of the census, under which there are about four percent of Serbs in Croatia, Mesic said that the number of Serbs in Croatia "is the result of the wrong policy". First the one of Slobodan Milosevic "who had been deceiving Serbs telling them that all would live in one country and that the expansion of Serbia should be advocated" and then the one of Franjo Tudjman "who thought the world would allow the division of Bosnia, the creation of a Greater Serbia and that in that case it would be good to expand the Croatian borders as well." He said that the return of Serbs was in Croatia's interest. He said this was the way for Croatia to confirm the maturity of its democracy. He said Croatia had not wanted the war but the war had been imposed on it. "Croatia did not enter the war to gain independence. Croatia passed a decision to become independent, which was its constitutional right. Milosevic, however, wanted a war and he lost it," Mesic said. (hina) it