ZAGREB, February 14, 2019 – After a meeting with his Serbian counterpart Nela Kuburović on Wednesday, Croatian Justice Minister Dražen Bošnjaković reiterated that he was not “that satisfied,” with the cooperation between the two ministries over the past year and that war reparation was not discussed.
Bošnjaković reiterated that at a meeting with the then Serbian justice minister last year, they had defined certain objectives and that at today’s meeting they “evaluated where they were at and what to do next.”
“I cannot say that I am overly satisfied with the way things have functioned over the past year, but then we have formed two commissions. One was tasked with defining an international agreement regarding processing war crimes and the other was to work on exchanging information about persons against whom criminal proceedings were being conducted or have been convicted. The commissions did work and we can’t say they didn’t, but they haven’t made any recommendations,” Bošnjaković said.
He underlined the wish to intensify meetings between the task forces and that by summer they come up with their recommendations. He explained that an international agreement will define how to regulate war crimes prosecution, adding that it would be above the Law on Jurisdiction that Serbia adopted.
He added that Serbia delivered a list of about 70 names of people in Croatia that Serbia has indicted but that they did not have the full list due to technical problems regarding data collection. Croatia however has sent Serbia a list of 1,300 names.
Asked whether the ministries’ delegations discussed war reparation, Bošnjaković said that this was not discussed as that “isn’t in the remit of the Justice Ministry but other ministries.”
During her visit to Croatia, Minister Kuburović also met with representatives of ethnic Serb minority organisations.
More news about relations between Croatia and Serbia can be found in the Politics section.
