Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said in Zagreb on Thursday that President Ivo Josipovic had not consulted her about his speech in which he apologised for Croatia's role in attempts to partition neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war of the 1990s, and stressed that Croatia never conducted a policy of aggression or laid claim to the territory of another country.
"Anyone who has a say in foreign policy must take into account the following facts: Croatia never waged a war of aggression or pursued a policy of aggression, either in the 1990s or ever," Kosor told reporters at government headquarters when asked to comment on the apology Josipovic made in a speech in the state parliament in Sarajevo on Wednesday.
Kosor said she would discuss the matter with Josipovic when he returned to Zagreb.
Kosor said that anyone speaking of Croatia's policies in the 1990s should not overlook three facts: that the war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of the policy of territorial expansion pursued by the regime of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and his followers; the Declaration on the Homeland War of 2000, which says that the Homeland War was a just and defensive war of liberation and that Croatia did not lay claim to the territory of another country; and the Declaration on Cooperation between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in defence against Serbian military aggression, which was based on a friendship and cooperation agreement signed by the two countries in 1992.
Stressing that the Croatian government supported every move to pay tribute to victims, Kosor said that Croatia, "at its own expense and without asking anyone who they are," had provided for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina after the outbreak of the war there.
