"Someone may launch an investigation, but I am not afraid because it will certainly show in the end that I am not guilty and that there was no joint criminal enterprise in Croatia," Radic said in an interview with Croatian Television in a news programme late on Wednesday.

Radic was asked if Croatian courts could start an investigation against him because he was named in the Hague war crimes tribunal's verdict against three Croatian generals as a member of a joint criminal enterprise the aim of which was to drive the Serb population out of occupied areas of Croatia during Operation Storm in the summer of 1995.

He said that the verdict, in which his name was mentioned only in passing, without any questions or evidence, put him in an unpleasant situation.

"All we did we did for the benefit of the Croatian people, saving, even what is being incriminated here, Serb houses," Radic said, adding that he was not afraid of an investigation because it would mean issuing an indictment in Croatia against Croatia. "In other words, someone in Croatia should launch a proceeding on the grounds that in Croatia, with President Franjo Tudjman at its helm, an organised criminal enterprise was carried out."

Radic said that he had been with Tudjman and if Tudjman was accused, he too agrees to be accused. "I never distanced myself from him and I know ways and situations when he said that every life and every Serb house needed to be saved."

Radic said that during the 1991-1995 war he had been responsible for bringing people back to Croat areas and for reconstruction. He said that at the time 1.5 million people were displaced from their homes and 250,000 houses were destroyed.

Speaking of transcripts of meetings mentioned in the verdict, Radic said that they were being quoted from out of context. He said that the often mentioned transcript of a meeting held on August 22, 1995 begins with him saying that several days previously he had travelled along the road from Sinj to Knin and had seen some houses burning. The president responded by saying that we must stop it and that such things must not happen, he added.

Radic said that at every meeting President Tudjman said that "not a single civilian must be killed", adding that Croatia had not been a fully organised state at the time.

"Tudjman encouraged prosecution of such cases, and you have seen a lot of evidence in recent days that many of such events were prosecuted," Radic said. "But it was not honourable Croatian soldiers under Gotovina, who now unfortunately stands accused in The Hague, who did that, but thieves and bandits, dogs of war," he added.

Radic said he did not know how many Croat and Serb houses had been rebuilt, because his ministry never discriminated between Serbs and Croats, but that the only thing that mattered was whether they applied for return and whether they wanted to return to their homes.

When the Serbs had left Knin, it was clear that half of them would never return, because many of them were not residents of Knin in the first place, Radic said, adding that several thousand officers of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) lived their with their families and they would have been transferred to other posts anyway even in peacetime.

Commenting on the part of the verdict mentioning Croatia's plan to bring the number of the Serbs down to three per cent, Radic said that there was also mention of 10 per cent and that the entire transcript should be examined. "Croatia had a right to repopulate the empty areas," he said.

Radic said that the Hague tribunal was operating under political pressure and that Croatia should not accept its judgement even at the cost of joining the European Union. "Croatia is the first country whose victorious army is on trial," he said.

In its verdict in the Gotovina, Cermak and Markac case, the Hague tribunal mentioned Radic as a member of the joint criminal enterprise. It says that evidence shows that he was in no way involved in Operation Storm or in military matters, but that his role became important when the Krajina Serbs left Croatia.