A calm discussion turned into a heated exchange of opinions when a representative of the Vukovar Mothers association, Ljiljana Alvir, pointed the finger at the chairman of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, Zarko Puhovski, over his statement that "Croatian mothers first pulled their children out of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), only to send them to the Croatian Army".
"We did not push our children into the war. The war was imposed and those who joined the army fought for Croatia," Alvir countered.
She criticised the conference's organisers for allowing only her as the representative of Croatian war victims associations to address the gathering and accused them of trying to "equate the guilt" for war crimes.
Her speech triggered spontaneous comments from the audience and representatives of other Croatian associations including the Bedem of Ljubavi (Mothers for Peace) and Homeland Defence war veterans who said they were fed up with "politicians, the Hague tribunal and Carla del Ponte" speaking about the truth about the wars in the former Yugoslav federation.
A speech by Vjera Solar, a mother from Sisak whose 19-year-old daughter was killed at the start of the war in Croatia and who claims that the killers were Croatian soldiers, provoked a new wave of criticism.
Solar said that victims killed by Serbs in Croatia and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia were being discussed in detail, while victims for whom the Croatian side was responsible were not being mentioned.
In response to this claim, a representative of widows from the Croatian town of Slavonski Brod advised Solar not to turn an individual tragedy into a political case, adding that crimes committed against Croats were not individual and recalled that an entire class of primary school children were killed in her town during the Serb aggression.
After this, representatives of Serb refugees from Kosovo, victims of the Srebrenica massacre and refugees from the Bosnian part of the Sava River valley said that it was they who were the most entitled to speak about the war conflicts and crimes as they had experienced them.
Carla del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), calmly listened to the exchange of arguments, sitting in the front row. She made no comment.
The conference "Establishing the Truth About War Crimes and Conflicts" that began in Zagreb on Thursday, was organised by three regional NGOs, the Zagreb-based "Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past", the Humanitarian Law Fund from Belgrade, and the Investigation-Documentation Centre (IDC) from Sarajevo.
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, ICTY President Fausto Pocar and some other senior officials held speeches at the event.