The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Croatia PM Calls for Better Relations with Serbia
Belgrade | 04 February 2010 | Bojana Barlovac
Already tense relations between the two neighbouring countries reached a peak after outgoing Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said on January 19 that he would intervene militarily if Republika Srpska attempted to secede from Bosnia.
Speaking about the recent cool relations between Serbia and Croatia, Kosor told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that "one should think about the consequences before saying something".
She went on to say that Mesic just wanted to emphasise that the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina is out of the question. "Croatia sees Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single country with three constitutive peoples," she pointed out.
Mesic's statement was the latest in a series of exchanges that have indicated a deterioration in relations between Serbia and Croatia. Two weeks ago, Serbian President Boris Tadic said he would not attend the inauguration of Croatia's new president, Ivo Josipovic, citing the attendance of his Kosovo counterpart as the reason.
The two countries have not yet settled a number of open issues related to the conflicts of the 1990s, including missing Croat combatants allegedly held captive in Serbia during the war, the extradition to Croatia of persons suspected of war crimes in Croatia, and the return of Serbian refugees to Croatia.
Serbia also expressed its displeasure with Mesic's recent official visit to Kosovo.
Furthermore, after waiting for Croatia to withdraw its genocide lawsuit against Serbia, Belgrade filed a countersuit on January 4, 2010.
Relations also deteriorated after Mesic recently cut one year off the jail sentence of a convicted war criminal.
Kosor earlier said that the two countries should stop with controversies and build their relations in the spirit of good neighbourliness.
"I don't think carrying on with controversies is good because it increases tensions. Regardless of the extremely difficult past, we must continue living in the spirit of good neighbourly relations," she said.
