The dispute between the president and government over new ambassadors has been ongoing for a year.
Some of the names revealed as the president’s candidates include former interior minister Ranko Ostojić, former environment protection minister Mihael Zmajlović and former ambassador to France Ivo Goldstein. Former foreign ministers Davor Ivo Stier and Miro Kovač and former diplomat Vladimir Drobnjak have been named as the government’s candidates.
Last week, Grlić Radman revealed the names on RTL Television, with Milanović reacting today, saying that some of these names were “made up” and are not “relevant.”
Milanović admitted that during their visit to New York, Grlić Radman had complained that one candidate was an ethnic Serb while one had Tito’s portrait in his office.
Milanović said that he doesn’t recommend Tito, recalling that the late president Franjo Tuđman had kept Tito’s bust in his office for 10 years. The problem is that Grlić Radman has now put all these people in an impossible position, he added.
Davor Ivo Stier is apparently the government’s candidate for ambassador to the Vatican, and Milanović says that his nomination is now in question.
Stier used to be an editor of an Ustasha newspaper. When I was his superior at the foreign ministry, I suggested that he be promoted and I never asked him about his past or who his grandfather was. I know that his grandfather was a war criminal, but that is irrelevant now, said Milanović.
We could then also say that Grlić’s father was a prominent communist (..)president of the local party, a representative in the social political council on behalf of the Communist Alliance, who held lectures about Tito. “That kind of hypocrisy is destroying this society,” Milanović said.
Policy towards BiH
Milanović called out Prime Minister Plenković over his recent statement about the Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, saying that he had a question for the prime minister regarding the policy towards that country and the status of Croats there.
At an EU-Western Balkans summit in October, Plenković said that “the EU is reading Dodik’s messages about the functioning of BiH with caution and disapproval.”
“I am the Croatian president, primarily in Croatia but in a certain way there too. I wonder whether it was the prime minister, the leader of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) or someone working in a third echelon at the Office of the High Representative who said that. He is saying something that a few bureaucrats in Brussels and a few ambitious activists want to hear, who want to turn BiH into a Switzerland, but that’s not working,” said Milanović.
