Croatia's Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusic has described as positive the statement by her Serbian counterpart Ivan Mrkic in which he mentioned the possibility of the two countries agreeing to withdraw their mutual lawsuits for genocide.
"It is the first explicitly positive reaction to our initiative since the start of the year, when we said that we were ready to discuss the mutual lawsuits provided that solutions were found to four key outstanding issues," Pusic told reporters during her visit to the southern town of Sinj on Saturday, when asked for a comment on Mrkic's statement.
She specified that the four important conditions for Croatia to withdraw its lawsuit were: the issue of 1,100 people still unaccounted-for from the 1991-1995 war, return of stolen works of art, war crimes indictments, war crimes suspects and their prosecution.
"If we manage to agree together on how to deal with those issues, then we are ready to include the issue of the mutual genocide lawsuits on the agenda," Pusic said, noting that Croatia's position remained unchanged.
President Ivo Josipovic was also asked to comment. "Of course, an agreement is always possible, but the conditions, which we in Croatia have been talking about a lot, should be met first, because if the goals which are the subject of the lawsuits are achieved, then the lawsuits become meaningless, but we have not yet reached that stage and it is too early to talk about it now."
