Italy and Croatia deteriorate relations?

Croatian President "unpleasantly surprised" at the content and tone of the latest statements by Italy state leadership.

Izvor: Hina.hr

Tuesday, 13.02.2007.

12:12

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Italy and Croatia deteriorate relations?

A renovated memorial site was inaugurated in Basovizza near Trieste, where, according to Italian media, many innocents were thrown towards the end of World War II by Tito's Partisans.

Presenting the decorations, Napolitano said the drama of the Giulian-Dalmatian people had been caused by the "Slavic bloodthirsty hatred and rage".

"These claims, in which one cannot but see elements of open racism, historical revisionism and political revenge-seeking, are definitely difficult to put side by side with the declared wish for the promotion of bilateral relations," the Office of the Croatian President said in a statement.

Napolitano said that the Slavic annexationist claims tipped the scales especially in the 1947 Peace Treaty and acquired the ominous outlines of ethnic cleansing.

In an interview with a Trieste daily last month, President Mesić provoked fierce protests by admitting that the Partisans were responsible for the massacres, but that those crimes had happened after the crimes committed by Italian fascist forces against Croat inhabitants of Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia.

President Mesić has advocated taking into account the wider historical context and opposed the concealing of facts, as well as the transformation of historical losers into historical winners, the statement said.

"The Republic of Croatia believes that any attempt to question the Osimo Accords, signed by Yugoslavia and Italy and taken over by the Republic of Croatia as one of the successors to the former federation, is absolutely unacceptable," the statement read.

President Mesić strongly believes that the two countries should build friendly relations, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of Europe which is uniting, as given in the statement.

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