"The problem is very complex and one meeting cannot certainly solve it. However, it is important to open a new page and create a new climate," said Josipovic on Sunday after meeting Bosnian Croat political parties' representatives in the northern town of Derventa.
Enabling Croats to come back to Posavina and the Serb entity called the Republic of Srpska was described by Josipovic in his address to the press as the main goal of his two-day working visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina this weekend.
Unfortunately, the number of returnees is too low. Less than percent of them have returned," said the Croatian president, adding that during today's meetings local representatives informed him that neither international nor local projects had been focused on the return to this part of Bosnia.
Josipovic said that a key to the problem was to create conditions for sustainable return as it was not sufficient to reconstruct homes ignoring job creation, health care and other rights.
The leader of the Croatian Democratic Union 1990 (HDZ 1990), Bozo Ljubic, said that the fact that today's meeting with President Josipovic in Derventa had to be held in a local Catholic church spoke enough of the position of Croats in the Serb entity.
This shows that Croats are deprived of their institutions where they could present their problems, Ljubic explained.
He criticised local authorities for creating many institutional obstacles to the return of Croats.
According to the HDZ 1990 leader, 50 percent of Croat refugees have come back to the Croat-Muslin entity (the Bosnian federation), while five percent have returned to their prewar homes in the Serb entity.
In response to questions from local Serb reporters, President Josipovic explained that he was going to Siijekovac to pay his respects to Serb victims from the 1992-1995 war and that he would not make any apology.
"I said everything about that in my speech in the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina," Josipovic added.
According to some figures, between nine and 20 local Serbs were killed by Craot and Bosniak forces in 1992.
After Derventa, Josipovic will visit Sijekovac as well as Brisevo and Kozarac to pay respects to innocent victims from the 1992-1995 war.
In Brisevo, a Croat-populated village near the northern town of Prijedor, Serb forces killed dozens of villagers on 24-25 July 1992. The youngest victim was 14 years old and the oldest one was 81 years old, according to information from the Catholic Church.
In Kozarac, the Serb forces killed at least 100 local Bosniaks (Muslims) and captured 1,500 people and detained them in concentration camps when they entered that village near Prijedor in May 1992, according to data collected by the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre.