Linta: Croatia is responsible for "technical vacuum"

BELGRADE - Head of the Coalition of Refugee Associations Miodrag Linta said on Wednesday the responsibility for the "technical vacuum" in the relations between Serbia and Croatia lay on the Croatian side.

Commenting a statement by Croatian President Ivo Josipovix that there is a "technical vacuum" in the relations between the two countries because a whole series of joint commissions that deal with important and sensitive topics meet rarely or never at all, Linta stated that Croatia was responsible for that.

According to Linta, it is best seen in the work done so far by seven joint commissions and working groups tasked with addressing open issues between the two countries.

A joint commission for the preparation and exchange of lists of indictees and those convicted in war crimes cases presented Serbia at the latest meeting in July 2013 with a new list of 1,577 names of those under investigation or indicted for war crimes, but Croatia has not stuck to the list and instead continued arresting Serbs who are not on it, Linta explained.

It is Croatia's responsibility to schedule the next meeting of the joint commission for missing persons, which met last in 2010, and Serbia has also been waiting for three years for Croatia to set a date for the next meeting of the national minorities committee.

The working group for pensions agreed at its most recent meeting, in November 2013, for the Croatian side to propose changes to the agreement on social insurance by February in order to create the legal framework to pay the late pensions for over 50,000 Serbian citizens, but that has not been done yet, he noted.

The commission for the return of cultural heritage held its most recent meeting in November 2013, and the...