"I do not agree that there was a criminal enterprise, because I myself was a member of the Croatian leadership until 1994. If there had been a criminal enterprise I would have known something about it. The court will have its say, but it will have to consider all the arguments and realise that it cannot draw far-reaching conclusions from a meeting that may have taken place in a special atmosphere," Mesic told reporters.
When asked to comment on the fact that the prosecution based the indictment in the case of three Croatian generals on transcripts from his office, Mesic said he did not know on what basis the indictment was put together.
"I was not elected to this office to hide evidence (...) but to abide by the Croatian Constitution. I am obligated under the Constitutional Law on Cooperation with the Hague tribunal to assist in establishing facts, and it is up to the tribunal to find if someone is guilty or not," the president said.
In a pre-trial brief filed ahead of the start of the joint trial of Croatian army generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, the prosecution announced it would use transcripts submitted by the Croatian President's Office to prove the alleged existence of the so-called joint criminal enterprise.
The indictment alleges that the three generals, together with the late president Franjo Tudjman, the late defence minister Gojko Susak, the late generals Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir Cervenko, and other unidentified members of the Croatian wartime leadership, planned and carried out a combined military and police operation codenamed Storm in early August 1995 with the aim of ethnically cleansing the areas of Croatia that were under Serb occupation at the time.
The prosecution claims that the plan was conceived at a meeting of the Croatian political and military leadership on the northern Adriatic archipelago of Brijuni on July 31, 1995, which was attended by Gotovina and Markac.