Addressing representatives of associations of killed and missing Croatian defenders and civilians, Matic said the government and other Croatian institutions would not give up searching for the truth about the unaccounted for.
"I am proud of the peace and dignity with which you are looking for the truth about the missing, which is why I immensely love and appreciate you," said the minister.
The president of the Alliance of Families of Detained and Missing Croatian Defenders, Ljiljana Alvir, said politics was the main reason why light had not been shed on the fate of the missing, adding that Serbia had obstructed the development of positive relations in the region countless times and stressing that the answers to questions about the missing were in Serbia.
She called on those in the Serb community in Croatia who knew something about the missing to speak up, saying that covering up the truth was a crime.
The president of the Alliance of Civilian War Victims, Julijana Rosandic, said 60 per cent of those exhumed from mass graves were civilians "killed just because they were Croats."
The head of the Administration for Detained and Missing Persons, Ivan Grujic, told the press that about 18,000 people were listed as missing at the start of the Serbian military aggression on Croatia and that about 1,000 more went missing in 1995.
He said 1,736 were still being traced, which "shows that more than 80 per cent of missing person cases were mainly solved through the activities of Croatian state institutions."
Grujic said many missing were found in mass and single graves and that 4,753 people were exhumed, of whom more than 80 per cent were identified.
He stressed that 147 mass graves had been discovered in Croatia to date.