Italy and Croatia make peace

Italy and Croatia make peace
Countries say spat sparked by WWII atrocities closed

ROME (ANSA) - Italy and Croatia announced on Saturday that a recent diplomatic row between the two countries over World War II atrocities was over.The Italian Foreign Ministry and Croatian President Stjepan Mesic issued separate statements confirming the ties of friendship between Italy and Croatia and declaring the incident closed.The spat began on February 10, when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano gave a speech commemorating the so-called Foibe massacres - the killing of Italians by Yugoslav partisans at the end of the war in the Istrian peninsula, in modern-day Slovenia and Croatia.Mesic angrily accused Napolitano of racism and revisionism over his interpretation of the massacres, which the Italian president had said were sparked by "feelings of hatred and bloodthirsty fury" and "took on the sinister connotation of ethnic cleansing".The Croatian leader took specific issue with Napolitano's statement that the massacres were linked to the "Slavs' plan of annexation" which the Italian head of state said had prevailed in the postwar, 1947 Peace Treaty between Italy and Yugoslavia."It is difficult not to notice the tones of evident racism, historical revisionism and political revanchism" in Napolitano's words, Mesic said.The squabble led to the cancellation of a visit to Croatia by Foreign Undersecretary Vittorio Craxi while Premier Romano Prodi called his Croatian counterpart Ivo Sanader to complain about Mesic's statements. The European Union stepped in last Wednesday, appearing to side with Italy by describing the language used by Mesic as "inappropriate" in a statement by European Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen.Mesic responded that the EC's criticism was "unilateral and unfair".The Croatian president closed the affair on Saturday with a statement saying that "misunderstandings" sparked by Napolitano's speech had been "clarified" during a week of "intense diplomatic contacts" between Rome and Zagreb.Mesic said he understood that Napolitano's speech had "not contained any polemical reference to Croatia" nor any attempt to revise peace treaties between the two nations, and retracted his accusations of historical revisionism.He stressed that the clarification had ensured the "continuation of friendly bilateral relations in the interests of the two countries".The Italian Foreign Ministry statement said it was "pleased that the misunderstandings have been cleared up" and stressed that Italy was anxious to "pursue a spirit of collaboration and friendship in bilateral relations".Italy also confirmed its support for Croatia's bid to join the EU.Up to 15,000 Italians were tortured or killed by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian peninsula during the last two years of the war. Many of the victims were thrown into deep mountain gorges known as the Foibe during anti-Fascist uprisings in the area.The exact number of victims of these atrocities is unknown, in part because the forces of Yugoslav strongman Marshal Josef Tito destroyed local population records to cover up their crimes.The Foibe atrocities were until recently a divisive issue in contemporary Italian politics, with right-wing politicians accusing the Left of trying to airbrush the massacres out of history and focusing exclusively on the crimes committed by the Fascist regime.A number of centre-left politicians now agree that the Foibe massacres constituted a brutal and neglected episode in Italian history.Others, however, insist the main victims were Fascists and other supporters of Mussolini and the Nazi regime. They also argue that the massacres were the direct result of the violent anti-Italian sentiment created by Fascism's crimes in the region, which had been brutally "Italianised" by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.Official Yugoslav postwar figures show that some 80,000 Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Montenegrins died during the 1941-43 Italian occupation of Dalmatia and Montenegro.In 2005 Italy instituted a Day of Memory on February 10 to commemorate the Foibe atrocities and the tens of thousands of Italians forced out of Istria and Dalmatia when these lands were given over to Yugoslavia after World War II.The Croatian government has proposed a joint historical commission to investigate crimes committed "before, during and after" the war, both by Italian Fascists and Yugoslav partisans.