President Ivo Josipovic said on Monday that former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's verbal attack on State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic in a Croatian Television talk show on Sunday had no elements of a crime and voiced confidence that the show, although seriously disputable morally and politically, would not affect the verdict in corruption proceedings against Sanader.
"The judges are professionals and have to be able to deal with such possible influence. I think the verdict will be legal and just regardless of the show," Josipovic said on Croatian Radio when asked if Sanader tried in the interview to square accounts with Bajic before the state prosecutor submits a report to parliament and the first verdict against Sanader is handed down.
Asked if he believed Sanader's claim that Bajic had asked him twice to extend his term of office, Josipovic said he saw nothing "illegal in that if the man ran for office."
As for Sanader's accusation that his successor Jadranka Kosor, by agreeing to the term "junction", had made it possible to cede Croatian territory to Slovenia, to which Sanader would not agree even at the expense of Croatia's accession to the European Union, the president said that was Sanader's assessment.
Josipovic said parliament ratified the border arbitration agreement with Slovenia and that this should be respected.
Asked about Slovenia's insistence on solving the issue of Ljubljanska Banka's debt to former Croatian depositors as a condition for ratifying Croatia's EU Accession Treaty and Slovenian Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec's statement that Croatia was constantly changing its mind about the debt issue, Josipovic said one should always talk, meet and seek a solution.
Josipovic said he agreed with Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic's statement that Croatia's position on the issue had always been the same and that it would honour everything that had been agreed and signed.
