HSLS LEADER CALLS ON PRESIDENT MESIC TO DENY OR EXPLAIN STATEMENTS IN HIS INTERVIEW TO "VOJVODINA"

ZAGREB, Sept 23 (Hina) - President of the Croatian Social Liberal Party (one of six parties in the ruling coalition) on Saturday called on Croatia's President Stjepan Mesic to refute or explain statements in an interview he gave to the Novi Sad daily "Vojvodina" recently when he asserted that everybody blamed everybody for the war in the former Yugoslavia. "It would be good that the President of the Republic either denies it or explains what he has meant," the HSLS President Drazen Budisa told reporters on Saturday. For Budisa it is an unacceptable thesis that all were responsible for war conflicts in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and that the cause of the war was the clash between two identical political concepts: "a Greater Serbia" and "a Greater Croatia." Asked who should extend apologies to whom and why for everything that had occurred in the past ten years, Mesic told the daily that "everybody should apologise to everybody". "Croats blame all Serbs and Moslems. Serbs blamed all Croats and Moslems. Everybody blamed everybody, but in fact, nobody was to blame because what was in effect was an incorrect policy which was founded on the idea that a Greater Croatia and a Greater Serbia should be created on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia," Mesic was quoted as saying. According to Budisa, the speech characteristic for the former SFRY has been reappearing in Croatia in relation to notions about internal and foreign enemies, a plot against the state and the revival of political emigration. I state with regret that with his clumsy statements President Mesic has entered this context, Budisa added. Budisa added that his party would never consent to the revision of the fundamental values of the Croatian State, the Homeland War or to the relativisation of the accountability for what had happened in the region since the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. (hina) ms