Croatian nationalism

The HDZ's wafer-thin new majority in the Croatian parliament - 76 out of 151 MPs in total - is likely to be just a temporary strategy employed by the party to push through legislation, with new elections likely to follow, veteran political Zarko Puhovski analyst told BIRN.

A former Yugoslav State Security Service official alleged in court that the former leader of the governing Croatian Democratic Union, Tomislav Karamarko, was an informer in the 1980s.

Croatia's ruling party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, fears its plans for the local elections in Zagreb could be upset after a far-right researcher, Bruna Esih, said she was running for Mayor.

Esih, aged 41, who entered parliament on the HDZ list as a non-party candidate in the last elections, already has the HDZ worried.

Croatia’s main Serb organisation will again boycott the annual state commemoration at the WWII concentration camp Jasenovac because a plaque with an Ustasa fascist slogan was installed near the site.

On a visit to Croatia, the US State Department envoy for Holocaust issues warned the authorities that symbols of the WWII fascist Ustasa movement are offensive to victims and their families.

Bruno Stojic, former defence minister of the unrecognised Bosnian Croat wartime statelet of Herzeg-Bosna, denied involvement in a joint criminal enterprise to create a greater Croatian state in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Croatia has been threatened with a lawsuit if it doesn’t support victims of the WWII fascist Ustasa movement in their claims for reparations - although one expert doubted Zagreb would back the case.

Jadranko Prlic, the former prime minister of the unrecognised wartime Herzeg-Bosna Croatian Community, is the first of the six Bosnian Croat ex-officials to launch an appeal on Monday against war crimes convictions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY in The Hague.

ZAGREB - As part of proceedings launched before the US District Court of Chicago last May, Croatia has recently been served with a class action lawsuit for 3.5 bln dollars in damages for the suffering endured by its ethnic Serbs, Roma and Jews during World War II.

A graffiti in Croatian reading "For home ready" along with pro-Ustasha emblems has been painted on a Serbian Orthodox church in the Croatian town of Sinj.

This was announced on Tuesday by the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC).