Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Wednesday he had the duty to go to Australia and New Zealand, although the two-week official visit was "politically complicated" because of the unacceptable iconography used by some of the local Croatian associations.
"There are people there who live in the past and think that Josip Broz (Tito) is still alive and, for some reason, they associate us with him. In one place 300 people gather with whom you have phenomenal communication, while in another 20 people gather who had the need to present themselves loudly because they live on conflicts and divisions which don't exist anymore even in Croatia. That's the way it is and it's complicated, while the trip was physically exhausting," Milanovic told a press conference a day after returning from the Oceania.
"By staying in Australia and New Zealand it was important to show that we take those people into account, and I didn't go there to get either their money or their votes."
Milanovic said he talked with many local Croats who were very successful and had tried to invest in Croatia, but most came back "with a bitter taste in their mouths."
"When someone encounters barriers set up by local government, they give up and these things should be prevented in Croatia."
Asked why his Social Democratic Party (SDP) had been late in submitting its financial report to the State Election Commission, he said a magistrate's court would decide on this oversight.
"It's much more important to me that the SDP had unconditional reports the whole time and I expect citizens to believe us because our finances are clean. We financed our campaigns with transparent and clear revenues, which is very important in politics, while others seized and plundered, spending three times more than us, while we watched and couldn't do anything."
Asked if Serbian Deputy PM Aleksandar Vucic, whose party won in a recent parliamentary election in Serbia, should apologise for his statements in Glina, Croatia in 1995, Milanovic said an apology meant nothing and that it was much more important how Serbia behaved today.
In those statements, Vucic spoke of Glina and the Banovina region as Serbian territories which would never be Croatian and referred to the Croatian authorities as Ustashas.
"That's a cross to bear for anyone who used such language in times when they thought that the language of force was productive. Things have changed, Croatia is free, and that will follow some people all their lives. An apology means nothing to me. We will gauge Serbia solely by how it looks today and what it does tomorrow. I'm much more interested in that than in what he said in Glina in 95."
On Thursday, Milanovic will be in Brussels for a European Council meeting at which the political part of the Association Agreement with Ukraine is to be signed. He said the meeting would also address growth, competitiveness, job creation, and energy.
"The situation in Ukraine puts Croatia on Europe's energy map in a new way, giving us more significance and highlighting more the importance of our supply routes via the Croatian coast and ports," he said.
(Hina)
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