ZAGREB, August 5, 2019 – Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Monday hinted that she would rerun for presidency.
“I am here in my capacity as the president of the republic, we will see each other in the next five years,” the current head of state said in her brief address to reporters after a ceremony in the southern town of Knin, held on the occasion of Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day.
She also extended to journalists her congratulations on the occasion of the holiday, marked on 5 August.
Addressing Sunday’s celebrations in Knin on the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the Operation Storm President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović underscored that the 1995 operation was an impeccably spotless liberating operation conducted by the Croatian Army.
During a reception of war commanders during the Homeland War in the presence of the state leadership, Grabar-Kitarović said that “we have to explain Operation Storm as it was, an impeccably spotless operation by the Croatian Army and police that liberated Croatian territory,” she said.
Gabar-Kitarović added that Croatia’s diplomacy did its role during the Storm operation and she recalled that a lot more could have been done.
Recalling talks with soldiers during her visit to Afghanistan, Grabar-Kitarović said that the homeland was defended while the enemy and dangers were far away.
Had Croatia been a member of the NATO Alliance during the aggression, Vukovar would never have happened, nor the war, she said adding that today Croatia is being defended in Afghanistan because if that far-away country falls, seven million people could be expected to head toward Europe.
Speaking about Croatia’s defence during the Homeland War, she underscored that she had a guilty conscience. “I would have liked to have taken a gun and gone to the battlefield but realised that not everything lies in bullets and facing those who are in front of you,” she underscored, adding that she was aware that she had a duty in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time.
One of those duties, she said, was when she worked as a NATO assistant secretary-general and explained that Operation Storm was a legitimate military operation.
She especially thanked former US Secretary of Defence, General James Mattis who, she said, said that Storm was “an impeccably conducted Croatian military operation that has entered into the text books of military history.”
She expressed her condolences on every victim. “We were just defending ourselves and in the meantime created a military force and a feeling of unity,” she said.
Mattis said in July 2017 that Operation Storm “is studied in the U.S. military to show what a well-led force, well trained, well equipped, and with good political guidance, how it can change the course of history”.
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