ZAGREB, June 23, 2020 – Croatia will continue to insist on solving the issue of persons gone missing in the Homeland War and the equal treatment of minorities in the two states, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic Radman said on Monday, a day after a parliamentary election in Serbia.
“There must always be cooperation, talks must always exist, especially because we are neighbours. We have certain outstanding issues, we have 1,892 missing persons we are tracing,” the Croatian minister told reporters.
Asked what kind of cooperation he expected after the landslide election victory of President Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party, he said the two countries had “many topics” they could discuss that “the Croatian public must be informed about.”
Croatia will continue to work so “the families of the missing and those killed have their satisfaction,” said Grlic Radman. “If Serbia has committed, if Serbian politics is credible in terms of commitment to the European journey, then it must prove it.”
He reiterated that Croatia would insist that the Croatian minority in Serbia had the same status that the Serb minority had in Croatia.
“We supported absolutely all Croatian representatives in the People’s Assembly. Unfortunately, the Serbian side still hasn’t honoured the international agreement on the protection of minorities, on fixed representation, so in the period ahead we will work very hard on achieving reciprocity,” he said.
“Just as Croatia meets all standards for the protection of minorities, and the Serb minority has seats in the Croatian parliament, we will insist that the same be done in Serbia,” he added.
