We will never be able to lay a firm and lasting foundation for our relations in the region unless we set the record straight about what happened and unless we determine the responsibility and guilt, Mesic said in his opening remarks at an international conference on establishing the truth about wars and war crimes, which opened at the Sheraton hotel in Zagreb on Thursday.
The truth is facts. It is what happened and there should be no bargaining about it, no downplaying it. We are talking about the truth after wars, or in other words, we are talking primarily about war crimes, about something that should not have happened but no doubt did happen, the Croatian president said.
Mesic said he had recently been reproached for justifying a crime with another crime, referring to reactions to his interview with an Italian newspaper.
That is certainly not the case. Crime cannot be justified, but it can be explained. Let me be quite precise here. The explanation does not justify, it only helps - sometimes, not always - in understanding not only what happened but also why it happened. But, let me reiterate, categorically and clearly: a crime is a crime and every crime should be condemned, Mesic said.
Speaking of the role of the Hague war crimes tribunal, Mesic said that the tribunal was helping to individualise guilt and shed the ballast of collective guilt that had been imposed at one time by politicians who were opposed to normalisation in the region.
The democratic Croatia, which seeks its place in the united Europe, should leave no room at all for doubt about its attitude towards war crimes, Mesic said, warning that there were still people who believed that one's services in the war nullified one's responsibility for war crimes and that such misconceptions should be challenged.
Kosor illustrated the scale of the 1991-1995 war in Croatia with figures. She said that 143 mass graves and about 1,200 single graves had been discovered, 360 children had been killed, and 860 people had been killed in Serb-occupied areas that had been under the control of UN peacekeeping forces.
Kosor said that Croatia was still looking for 1,122 persons who have been unaccounted for since 1991 and 930 who went missing in 1995, adding that the Croatian government had reaffirmed its political will to shed light on their fate.
Before the conference started, about 50 representatives of several war veterans' organisations gathered outside the hotel in protest at the conference. Protesters said that conference organisers had invited only one representative of one of the war victims' organisations to attend the conference, which that person refused.
The conference aims to apportion the blame between the victim and the aggressor. It avoids clearly to state facts about prisoners of war, one of the protest organisers said. The truth cannot be established without war veterans, he added.
Before entering the hotel, Mesic told the protesters that one of Croatia's priorities was to shed light on the fate of missing persons, and that those protesting against the Hague war crimes tribunal were actually protesting against efforts to establish the truth.