Social Democrat (SDP) leader Zoran Milanovic said on Friday his party did not recognise the joint criminal enterprise incrimination based on which Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were sentenced by the Hague war crimes tribunal to 24 and 18 years' imprisonment pending appeal respectively, but stressed that the sentences would not have been severe had Croatia functioned as a law-based state and punished crimes after the summer 1995 Operation Storm.
"Had Croatia functioned as a state then, (the generals) wouldn't have to pay someone else's debt. Now they are paying someone else's debt," Milanovic told the press.
He said that today's sentences left a bitter taste, leaving Croatia in an unwanted and awkward position, but added that it would "not shroud the state and the people in mourning."
Members of the press asked about his view of the political and legal consequences of accepting the Hague tribunal prosecution's argument about a joint criminal enterprise which included a considerable number of Croatia's military and political leaders in 1995.
Milanovic said he did not want to foment tension, or engage in manipulation for political gain. "That's unacceptable and immoral and I hope nobody will do it."
He reiterated that the first and only one to have objected to the joint criminal enterprise argument was former Prime Minister and SDP leader Ivica Racan in 2001, in a document sent to the Hague tribunal.
Milanovic would not comment on Veterans Minister Tomislav Ivic'a statement earlier today that Racan was to blame for the Gotovina sentence.
Commenting on today's sentences, the vice president of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Andrija Hebrang, said he took part in Operation Storm and that it involved neither expulsion nor destruction.
He said he was in Knin on 6 August 1995 and that no house had been demolished.
"President Tudjman's order was to keep the civilians. He didn't need empty Croatian lands," he said referring to Croatia's president in 1995, the late Franjo Tudjman.
