Brnabic: Relations between Croatia, Serbia difficult but progress has been made

Brnabic arrived in the Croatian capital as a part of the Serbian delegation, which also includes the Minister for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue Tomislav Zigmanov, the first representative of the Croatian national minority in a Serbian government, according to Hina news agency.

“Relations between Serbia and Croatia are burdened with many issues, misunderstandings, disagreements, deep wounds and great mistrust, so much so that none of our visits to Zagreb or any visit of Croatian officials to Serbia was just an ordinary visit, but always something more than that, and so is mine today,” said Brnabic.

She stressed she wanted a more regular, usual exchange.

“We want them to be just ordinary visits, to be more frequent and regular, and not each of them to be a negative or hostile symbol, but a normal working day that we will use to discuss all open issues and topics that are important for the future, for all our citizens and for our entire economy,” said Brnabic.

Regarding the meeting with her Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic, she said it was concrete and constructive and that she hopes it was the first in a series of meetings.

“We talked about projects such as the re-establishment of railway traffic between Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, but we touched on all the open issues, no matter how difficult and emotional they are, and how to go about solving them,” said Brnabic.