Tadić to attend Josipović’s inauguration?

Croatia’s new President Ivo Josipović stated that he expected Serbian President Boris Tadić to be among the guests at his inauguration.

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Tadić to attend Josipović’s inauguration?

Croatia’s new President Ivo Josipović stated that he expected Serbian President Boris Tadić to be among the guests at his inauguration.

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The ceremony is scheduled for February 18.

“We are compiling a list of guests for the inauguration. I believe that the Serbian president will be on it,“ Josipović told Croatian daily Jutranji List in Zagreb on Wednesday.

Asked what he would do to improve relations with Serbia that, the newspaper said, outgoing President Stjepan Mesić “additionally strained” by recently visiting Kosovo and shortening the sentence of a war criminal guilty of killing ethnic Serbs, Josipović said that good relations with neighbors were one of his priorities, because Croatia’s security directly depended on them.

“Cooperation with the neighbors is also important for our economy, because we are mainly exporting to these states. We are expecting arrival of new tourists, too,“ he said.

Asked whether he would be visiting “Jasenovac or Bleiburg”, Josipović stated that Jasenovac was an “indisputable place”, while Bleiburg was “primarily about political marketing”.

Jasenovac was a death camp used for mass killing of Serbs, Jews and Romas, set up by the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the Second World War, and ran by this puppet Nazi entity’s Ustasha organization.

At the end of the war, many Ustashas, along with others deemed as collaborators by the winning, Partisan side, were killed while retreating in Bleiburg, which is located near the Slovenian-Austrian border.

“Jasenovac is an indisputable place, that horrible place of suffering. In Bleiburg, on the other hand, the victims are not in the forefront, political marketing is. The moment the politicizing and a desire to lead daily politics via indisputable victims ends, I will go to Bleiburg. I would not go as long as ‘people in black’ show up there,“ he said, in apparent reference to Ustasha supporters.

Josipović also said that he believes leader of Social Democratic Party (SDP) Zoran Milanović would make an “excellent prime minister”.

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