Thursday 14.01.2010 | 14:25
Source: Danas, Tanjug
Serbia and Bosnia will likely be the first trips abroad for newlyelected Croatian president Ivo Josipović, says an ethnic Serb leader in Croatia.
Close the entire text of the article here
Milorad Pupovac, Ivo Josipović (Tanjug, file)
However, noted Milorad Pupovac, it would not be wise if he decided to go to Kosovo at this point.
“We expect that Ivo Josipović and (Serbian president) Boris Tadić will meet relatively soon and that Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina will be among the first countries that the future Croatian president will visit,” Pupovac said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
“I would not advise Josipović to focus his priorities on Kosovo, but rather on Serbia and Bosnia as this is where Croatia is expected to give a significant contribution, which was not the case in the past period,” he added.
According to Pupovac, the relations between Serbia and Croatia have been damaged because of the genocide lawsuits the two countries decided to file against each other, the way in which Croatia testified before the International Court of Justice in the case of the unilateral proclamation of Kosovo’s independence, and the recent visit of former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić to Priština.
“I’ll gladly come to Belgrade”
“I will be happy to visit Belgrade when the necessary preparations have been done,” Josipović told Belgrade daily Danas.
Josipović pointed out that Croatia filed the genocide lawsuit at a time when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ) did not cooperate enough in determining the fate of the missing, did not want to return Croatian cultural treasure and did not work on solving of war crimes cases.
According to him, serious progress has been made since then.
“Although the fate of about 1,300 people remains unknown, the cooperation in the search is good. A part of the cultural treasure has been returned and Serbia is prosecuting war criminals and cooperating with the Hague Tribunal,“ Josipović said, and added listed extradition of Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić as the remaining problems, as well as determining of the fate of all the missing persons and “decisive return of the robbed cultural treasure”.
“If satisfactory progress were made, that would certainly arise the question of the lawsuit’s purpose. It serves a prupose only when demands cannot be achieve through negotiations,“ the Croat president-elect stated.
According to him, “cooperation between Belgrade and Zagreb must be better because it guarantees security and progress in the region”.
“It is in the best interest of both countries, it is in the interest of peace in this part of the world,“ he said.
Analysts see Josipović’s convincing victory in the presidential elections as a confirmation of the wish of the Croatian voters to join the EU as soon as possible.
The Croatian president said that the realistic date for Croatia’s accession to the EU was January 1, 2012.
