Croatian President Ivo Josipovic and Parliament Speaker Josip Leko on Wednesday declined to comment on the ICTY verdict against six former high-ranking officials from the wartime Croat entity of Herceg-Bosna, stressing however that Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina must turn to the future and continue good-neighbourly cooperation.
"When I listen to such a ruling, the first thing that comes to mind are the victims. My heart goes out to the victims and their families, just like in all other cases of horrible crimes that took place in the region of the former Yugoslavia," Josipovic told reporters in parliament.
He said that relations between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war were ambivalent.
"I spoke about some moves of the policy pursued by Croatia which I considered to be wrong in the Bosnian state parliament, but today it is time that we turn to the future. Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have very good cooperation, we have a shared European future and events from the past must not burden it," Josipovic said.
Leko stressed the ICTY must be respected "regardless of whether we like its rulings or not", reiterating that from the previous experience with ICTY cases one can hope that the final ruling could be significantly different.
"Croatia has a principled position that all crimes must be punished regardless of who had committed them. I hope that Croatia and Bosnia bear in mind their future and a vision of their future in the European Union and that they will resume with the policy of good-neighbourliness and cooperation so that both countries could prosper in all political and economic objectives," Leko said.
