ZAGREB, Oct 27, 2020 – Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlic Radman has described as “ill-intentioned” reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit has been postponed for political reasons, stressing that a future meeting “is beyond question.”
The Russian minister was to have visited Croatia on Tuesday but the visit was postponed.
The Jutarnji List daily of Monday said that “Russian sources claim Minister Lavrov is angry because Prime Minister (Andrej) Plenkovic did not want to meet with him”, a claim that was strongly dismissed on the same day by the Croatian government, which said that the visit was postponed at the request of the Russian side due to the epidemiological situation at the Russian Embassy in Zagreb.
The government also said that a meeting with the prime minister had been scheduled.
“I don’t know where this comes from, all the meetings were arranged,” Grlic Radman said on Tuesday, stressing that the Russian ambassador to Croatia had arranged meetings between Lavrov and Plenkovic as well as President Zoran Milanovic and that Lavrov had also been informed of the topics of the meeting with Plenkovic.
Grlic Radman repeated that the visit had been cancelled due to the epidemiological situation.
“To organise a visit by a minister you need to have logistics – an ambassador and their associates to help organise it,” Grlic Radman said.
“Just as this meeting has been postponed so will the next be agreed. That is beyond doubt,” said the minister.
He could not say when a new date for the visit would be agreed but noted that “agreement will be reached soon.”
Lavrov is visiting Athens, Sarajevo and Belgrade as part of his tour of Southeast European countries and only the visit to Zagreb has been cancelled.
