Linta: Relations are stagnating, Zagreb is responsible

BELGRADE - President of the Coalition of Refugee Associations in Serbia Miodrag Linta has said that he agrees with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic's opinion that relations between the governments in Belgrade and Zagreb are stagnating and argues that the responsibility for this should be sought on the Croatian side.

"Josipovic did not say that the responsibility for the stagnation in relations should be borne by the Croatian side, because Zagreb lacks the political will to find a just and permanent solution to a number of outstanding issues between the two countries," Linda said in a statement.

To give an example, Linta pointed out that since the end of 2011, when Croatia had signed the accession treaty with the European Union, Zagreb had drastically reduced or stopped setting aside completely the funds intended for solving many problems facing Serb returnees. He referred to the Croatian government's budgets for 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Linta said that that Josipovic's statement that each of the outstanding issues was being dealt with by its respective intergovernmental committee was not true.
"Currently, there are six intergovernmental committees or working groups, whose task is to contribute to resolving the outstanding issues between the two countries: war crimes, missing persons, ethnic minorities, pensions, cultural resources and borders," Linta said in the statement.

Linta points out, however, that nobody continued the work of the former Yugoslav-Croatian Commission that that was in charge of the issue of compensation for damages caused to over 10,000 Serb houses and commercial properties in terrorist operations in a number of Croatian cities where there was no war.

He also says that a committee for the...