"I did not do it when Domagoj Margetic published my testimony because I have no interest in persons like him. I spoke the truth in The Hague and I stand by what I said at the time. The only thing that has changed is that I used to be under police surveillance and now I am under police protection. Those who wanted to manipulate the public and portray a false picture of me are not interested in the truth," Mesic said during a visit to the northern town of Donja Stubica on Wednesday.
Mesic said that he did not realise at the start of his term in office that he should have requested that the transcript of his testimony be declassified and that his status of a protected witness be abolished since he testified as a member of the public.
In the declassified statement to investigators of the Hague tribunal from April 1997 and the transcript of his testimony from March 1998, Mesic mostly speaks of what he knows about the policy of President Franjo Tudjman and the Croatian Democratic Union towards Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, the crucial impact of the Milosevic-Tudjman meeting in Karadjordjevo on 30 March 1991 on that policy, the subsequent involvement of officials from Zagreb and the HDZ from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the roles of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and the Croatian Army (HV), the 1993/94 conflict between Bosnia's Muslims and Croats and other topics relevant to the trial of Tihomir Blaskic, the war-time commander of the HVO in central Bosnia.