"Some are playing dumb now. Perhaps these are too harsh words but sometimes one should call a spade a spade," Sanader said at a government session.
Recalling that the Constitutional Court in 1999 passed a decision to pay compensation to foreign citizens whose property had been confiscated during the communist regime, Sanader said that "the successors to the communists, once communists themselves, are now playing dumb".
He stressed that it was an issue of the rule of law whether the court decision would be respected or not.
Sanader said he believed that former Constitutional Court president Jadranko Crnic, who was in office at the time, should join in the debate about the agreement.
Justice Minister Vesna Skare Ozbolt recalled that the law providing for the payment of compensation for property confiscated during the communist regime had been amended in 2002 at the initiative of the former government to include the possibility of conclusion of bilateral agreements.
She added that the former government, led by Ivica Racan, had formalised negotiations on property restitution when it decided to establish a commission in charge of drawing up agreements on property restitution.
She went on to say that the former government had made a list of countries with which such agreements should be signed, and that the list included 444 property restitution requests submitted by Austrian citizens, 163 requests submitted by French citizens, etc.
There were three rounds of negotiations, including two during the term of the Racan cabinet (in June and October 2003), and the incumbent government completed them in April this year, the minister said.
"The starting point for the talks was that relations regulated with agreements concluded between the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Austria could not be changed and that the right to compensation should not be granted to somebody who had already been compensated on the basis of some previous document concluded by the two states," the minister said.