Ivo Sanader

Ero believes the ruling Fidesz party has been the driving force behind this vainglorious project on the grounds that Prime Minister Viktor Orban needs an iconic building to symbolise Hungary's position as a regional power.

The government stressed the need to create new jobs and reduce unemployment, and for demographic renewal - which it was planning to assist by offering financial compensation to parents of newborn children.

"There is no external pressure to encourage change; the [European] Commission, for example, has abolished the anti-corruption reports it once had."

Responsibility for the fight, Ivkovic Novokmet said, had fallen on institutions now firmly in the hands of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, in power since January 2016.

In addition to receiving a bribe of € 10 million to hand over management rights to the Hungarians, the former Prime Minister is also accused of agreeing with Zsolt Herndi, CEO of the Hungarian MOL, to extract a non-profitable part of the Ina gas business, according to the portal index.hr.

"These are individuals, perhaps organised, but they are not the fruit of some climate in society, they are deviations that need to be dealt with based on individual responsibility," Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday.

Plenkovic added that the government "won't be sucked into a spiral of hate".

On his first visit to Croatia in several years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic had agreed on the need to resolve the thorny dispute over ownership of the Croatian energy company INA.

"I came to change this unnatural situation and return our relations to the normal track," Orban told the press conference on Monday.

The judge reading the verdict convicting former premier Ivo Sanader of war profiteering said a mitigating factor was his wartime service - but ex-members of his unit alleged he only served for a day.

Zagreb County Court on Monday convicted former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader of war profiteering for accepting an unlawful payment of 3.6 million kunas (around 485,000 euros) during talks between Austria's Hypo Bank and the Croatian government.

The talks took place during the war, between late 1994 and March 1995, when Sanader was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Croatia needs a grand coalition of its two biggest parties - the Social Democratic Party and conservative HDZ - in order to put to rest an "irrational and meaningless" conflict over the country's 20th-century history and focus on more pressing issues, former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader says in his new book.

Senior US official Hoyt Brian Yee will be the new US ambassador to FYROM (Macedonia), the US State Department has confirmed for Jazeera.

He will replace Jess Baily, who was appointed as US ambassador in Skopje in December 2014.