The issue of persons gone missing in the 1991-95 war is perhaps the most painful issue in Croatian-Serbian relations, Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said in the easternmost town of Vukovar on Thursday after meeting representatives of war victims' associations together with Serbian President Boris Tadic and Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor.
"The clear result of the meeting is the unequivocal will of both Croatia and Serbia and all representatives of the two countries' authorities to trace the missing, to determine what happened to them, regardless of ethnicity," Josipovic told a joint news conference with Tadic.
"Today Croatia is looking for its citizens of both Croat and Serb nationality, because we know that every mother cries the same way for her missing son or daughter," Josipovic said, adding he expected a lot from today's meeting and that both Croatia and Serbia would intensify their search for missing persons.
He voiced confidence that neither country lacked the will and determination to establish what happened to the missing.
Tadic said he and Josipovic had the duty and the obligation to turn the whole tragic process between Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s into one of reconciliation and better mutual understanding.
"For that to happen, it is imperative to shed light on the 90s with the truth, so that no one who is guilty goes unpunished and no one who is innocent is wrongfully convicted," Tadic said, adding that both countries must do their best to dispel the uncertainty of all those who still did not know what had happened to their loved ones.
"I will speak for my country. There is no reason nor political will in Serbia to stop the uncovering of the whole truth," he said, adding that he and Serbia's representatives in the Croatian-Serbian missing persons commission had brought part of the documentation from Vukovar's hospital.
Tadic announced that the search for the rest of the documents would continue so as to shed light on the fate of the missing.
"Today we are sending out a message not only to our fellow citizens of both nationalities but to the international public as well, because we want to assure them that this is a region where common values are honoured," said Tadic.
The documents seized from Vukovar's hospital in 1991 were turned over to Croatian Assistant Veterans Minister Ivan Grujic by the chairman of the Serbian missing persons commission, Veljko Odalovic.
Grujic said the documents "cover all areas of importance to us, while it has yet to be established if this is the entire documentation from Vukovar's hospital."
After crushing the town's defence on 18 November 1991, members of the former Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary units the next day took away at least 263 wounded people and civilians from Vukovar's hospital, of whom 200 were killed the next day at Ovcara, a farm five kilometres from Vukovar. The rest of those people are still being searched for.
A mass grave at Ovcara was exhumed in 1996 in the presence of international forensic experts who began trial excavations in late 1992, but had to stop due to pressure from the then occupying authorities in the town. The youngest exhumed victim was 16, the oldest 77. A monument was erected at Ovcara in late 1998.
