PUBLICATION 'CROATIAN MEDIEVAL DEMOCRACY' PRESENTED IN ZAGREB

ZAGREB, Dec 20 (Hina) - Croatia's Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sanader on Monday presented "Croatian Medieval Diplomacy", a collection of papers of the Croatian Diplomatic Academy, containing works from a symposium which was held under the same title in Zadar last year. The collection bears witness as to how negotiations were conducted in the early Middle Ages, what the diplomacy of Croatian rulers, great men, and the nobility was like, as well as what the papal diplomacy was like, considering its Croat segment, Sanader said at the presentation in Zagreb. The systematic study of our political past, in this case, our diplomatic past, shows that Croatia's sovereignty today did not come from nowhere but that it continued to develop on the Croatian state tradition which changed through centuries, Sanader said. The Deputy Foreign Minister said the origins of the Croatian diplomacy went back as far as the ninth century and the Pope's letters to Croatian princes. Sanader reminded that Croatia marked the day of its diplomacy on June 7, the same day on which in 879 Pope John VIII, as the supreme authority of the then European civilisation, informed Prince Branimir that he had recognised his authority over the whole of Croatia. Speaking about the publication were also Foreign Minister Mate Granic and the head of the Croatian Institute for Historical Sciences, Mirko Valentic. (hina) rml