"The campaign is barely worth a comment. Actually it is, but only to reveal its actual goal. It is a cheap imputation aimed at diverting the public's attention from the real problems Croatian citizens are facing on a daily basis and create homogeneity on the platform for reviving the emotions and prejudice that dominated in the early 1990s," Mesic told Politika, saying that the campaign was launched against him the minute he commented on the ICTY verdicts against Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac.

Mesic said that the generals are only pawns in whom those who launched the lynching campaign are not even interested. Mesic said he was being targeted because he had been advocating for years cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague and facing the truth about the past, "which includes admitting that crimes had been committed on our side, the Croatian side as well."

Mesic, however, said he was confident that the media campaign against him did not reflect the position of the majority of Croatian citizens.

Asked if the verdict against Gotovina and Markac was in fact a verdict against Franjo Tudjman, Mesic answered in the positive, saying that this was an indirect verdict against Tudjman, Gojko Susak and the then state leadership.

"This is not a verdict against the Homeland War or Operations Storm and Flash, or those who took part in those operations and it especially is not a verdict against Croatia," Mesic said.

Asked if Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and President Ivo Josipovic should now apologise to Serb victims, as he had done in Bosnia or as Serbian President Boris Tadic had done in Croatia and Bosnia, Mesic said that he, as Croatian president, had already apologised for all wrongdoings committed on the Croatian side, adding that he saw no point in asking every Croatian or every Serbian president to repeat the apology.