Government of Croatia

The cabinet of Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic announced that the meeting with Ivan Vrkic and Veran Matic took place on October 25 in Zagreb.

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.

"We are eagerly awaiting Putin in Zagreb," she said in an interview with the Moscow-based Kommersant, recalling that Putin was already invited last year during her trip to Sochi, and once again this summer while she was in Moscow.

Vucic said this when asked by reporters to comment on Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarevic's statement about Croatia and Albania being "brothers in arms."

Vucic said it "speaks sufficiently to the difficulty of our position and how much some people don't want us to progress."

Ahead of Wednesday's World Cup semi-final showdown in Moscow, British tabloids have cranked up their coverage of England's Western Balkan rival in the match, Croatia.

Denis Romac, vice-president of the Croatian Journalists' Association, told BIRN that the attack on journalist Hrvoje Bajlo on Sunday evening in Zadar was a consequence of state institutions not reacting properly to a recent alleged threat to another reporter by a government minister.

A socially conservative civic initiative in Croatia, "The People Decide", which is campaigning for changes to Croatian election law, on Wednesday submitted its request for a referendum, "For a fairer electoral system", to the Croatian parliament. 

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.

A meeting of the HDZ's presidency and National Council on Monday decided that the party's political secretary, Davor Ivo Stier and its international relations secretary, Miro Kovac, will be removed from their senior positions after a series of disputes within the centre-right ruling party.

Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic has said that "the will of the people must be respected" after a conservative campaign group called The People Decide gathered more than 370,000 signatures, equal to 10 per cent of the total electorate - enough to have its referendum proposal considered by officials.