ZAGREB, Oct 5 (Hina) - President Stjepan Mesic said in an interview with national television on Saturday that Croatian citizens need not be afraid of sanctions as everything the government was doing in the case of indicted Gen. Janko
Bobetko was within the rules of work of the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
ZAGREB, Oct 5 (Hina) - President Stjepan Mesic said in an interview
with national television on Saturday that Croatian citizens need
not be afraid of sanctions as everything the government was doing in
the case of indicted Gen. Janko Bobetko was within the rules of work
of the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague. #L#
The Hague tribunal's Statute envisages measures which a government
may take to protect national interests, which is what the Croatian
government is doing, Mesic said, stating that the government was
doing fine.
Speaking about his testimony at the trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague earlier this week, Mesic
said Croatia was and would continue cooperating with the tribunal
as that was its international commitment, by which the government,
parliament and all citizens have to abide.
Noting that "Croatian radicals" and "those referring to their big
Croathood" had objected to his testimony at the Milosevic trial,
Mesic said that he had had to go and speak about all the facts that he
was familiar with.
"By doing so I manifested the will and obligation that all Croatian
citizens have to answer to questions from the Hague tribunal, and
this has now become perfectly clear among the Croatian public," the
President said.
He stated that in testifying he had verified the authenticity of
hundreds of documents in the prosecution's hands, and added that he
had supplied some documents from his personal archives.
As the last chairman of former Yugoslavia's collective presidency,
Mesic said that he had been able to testify as to what had been going
on and say, among other things, which military units had been sent
from Belgrade to Croatia without the presidency's consent.
Asked why he had answered Milosevic's questions which did not refer
to the indictment, Mesic said it was because the Hague tribunal's
judges came from different parts of the world and were not familiar
with the war as Croatian citizens were.
Mesic evaluated that his testimony could help Serbia reach a
catharsis after the media blockade during the war, when many
citizens did not know about Milosevic's criminal plan.
It might help Serbia's citizens understand where Milosevic was
leading the Serbs and Serbia, know why their economy was ravaged and
why their sons were killed outside of Serbia, said Mesic.
Asked how a possible testimony by former Bosnian Serb leader
Biljana Plavsic might affect the Milosevic trial, Mesic said that
her testimony, coming from someone from Milosevic's circle, could
help shed light on how the creation of the Greater Serbia had been
planned, on how Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina happened to accept that
notion and side with Milosevic's aggression.
Plavsic would also be able to speak about the cooperation between
the Serbs' quasi-state in Croatia and the Bosnian Serb entity, said
Mesic.
He stated that the most important aspect of Plavsic's admission to
responsibility for the persecution of Bosnia's non-Serb population
was that it indicated that individuals were to blame for the war and
not peoples. That might contribute to cooperation on the territory
of the former Yugoslavia, which is crucial for associated Europe,
Mesic said.
(hina) ha sb