"Croatia is their country just as it is mine," Gotovina said. He and General Mladen Markac were acquitted of war crimes charges by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday and immediately released.

When asked if the refugees could trust his invitation for them to return, Gotovina said that they certainly could, repeating that Croatia was their home too. "Those who wish to return, who have their houses here, I don't need to invite them. They should come back," the general said.

When asked if he would call for prosecution of war crimes that had been committed during Operation Storm in August 1995, which ended a four-year-long Serb insurgency in Croatia, Gotovina said: "Look, it was a war. It's a matter of the past. Let's turn to the future. The war belongs to the past and there are institutions dealing with it."

Responding to the interviewer's remark that he was held in high esteem in Croatia, Gotovina said: "I'm just an ordinary citizen, like anyone else, be they Hungarian, Italian, Ruthenian, Serbian or German. In fact, it is their country just as it is mine."

The general also briefly described his life with other detainees in the tribunal's detention unit in the Hague district of Scheveningen. "We had to live together and we did so," he said.

When asked to comment on speculations in Croatian media about his possible political career, Gotovina evaded an answer, inviting the journalist for a coffee. "If you come to Croatia, we'll have a coffee together," he concluded.