Attending together this concert on behalf of our countries and nations we would like to pledge our firm commitment, just as we did last year in Trieste, to the victory of what unites us over what painfully divided us in a difficult historical period marked by the wars between the countries and the nations, the two presidents said.

Croatia and Italy have embraced common values, primarily freedom and the rights of individuals, the dignity and equality of citizens before law, freedom of entrepreneurship, values of cooperation and solidarity between the nations, according to the statement.

"Today, our countries and our societies are free of all ideologies based on discrimination. Now, after the finalisation of Croatia's European Union accession negotiations, the Croatian and Italian peoples face a common future based on the tenets of democracy in the united Europe. Soon there will be no borders between our countries."

"Our nations are tied with more than a thousand years of living together in the common civilisation and culture. We can build a stable and fruitful peace on these historical foundations," they added.

Sharing the joy and confidence that future possibilities inspire in us, we also feel obliged to recall dark pages of our shared history, they said.

In the past, gross mistakes and injustices were made. In the last century, a century of horrors for the history of humankind, the toll of those mistakes and injustice were tragic destinies of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, they said.

This is an occasion to remember the tragedy of victims of Italian fascism that persecuted minorities and used arms against the neighbours Croats. This fascism was also aimed against the freedom and life of Italians themselves. This is also an occasion to remember the Italian victims of revenge exacted by the former Yugoslavia in the wake of WWII. There is no justification for those horrendous crimes. In the united Europe they cannot be repeated any more."

Once again we condemn totalitarian ideologies that brutally stamped out freedom and violated the rights of individuals to be different by birth or by their own choice.

In the name of our nations and the future of all of us and our children, we pay tribute to the victims who lost their lives or were uprooted from their homes, the two presidents said.

In each of our countries we cherish the memories of the suffering and of the victims, and we sympathise with those who have survived those bloody events from the past, they added.

"Forgiving each other for the evils done, we are looking towards the future, which, thanks to a crucial contribution from the youngest generation, we want to and can build in Europe which is increasingly appropriately representing its many traditions and is being increasingly firmly connected ahead of new challenges of globalisation," they said.

"Our minorities, a large Italian minority in Croatia and a somewhat smaller but vital Croatian minority in Italy, have deeply interwoven roots. Croatia and Italy, together and individually, will ardently advocate the rights and human dignity, the brotherhood of the nations and individuals in the common European home," they concluded.