SDP chief Milanovic said today's meeting focused on election strategies and party lists.

Commenting on the government's proposal for alleviating problems affecting citizens who have taken loans pegged to the Swiss franc and the response of the banking sector to it, Milanovic said: "The banks are obviously ready for some kind of solution and the government made its proposal independently, obviously without consulting with the banks and the Croatian National Bank. This kind of communication between the banks and the government is not a solution. There is an awareness both among the banks and in the government that loan beneficiaries should be returned to the zone of security, to the euro. Both the banks and the state should accept their share of the risk and sit at the table, but together with the HNB."

Asked to comment on Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor's statement that Croatia was coming out of the crisis, HNS leader Cacic said that unemployment in the country was still growing while production and GDP were declining. "If that means coming out of the crisis, then I really don't understand it."

"Croatia has the necessary resources and potential, it has brilliant people, but something should be done to finally wake them up," SDP leader Milanovic added.

Asked by the press if they were concerned that the meeting in Kastel Zegarski would be understood as an act of provocation since the village was in the area where the Croatian Serb rebellion had started in the early 1990s, Milanovic said he would be concerned if he lived in some other country. "But this is Croatia and I'm not afraid that this will be seen as an act of provocation. To tell you the truth, I didn't know which people live here," he said.