Croatia shocked by president's support for WWII Nazi regime

A speech made more than a decade ago by Stipe Mesic - now Croatia's president - in which he

apparently glorified Croatia's World War II pro-Nazi state shocked many across the country on Sunday.

In an audio recording posted at the Index.Hr Web portal on Saturday, a voice that sounds like Mesic's said Croats won twice during the war - when they established the pro-Nazi puppet state in 1941, and when their antifascists crushed the Nazis in 1945.

The portal said Mesic made the speech in the early 1990s, when he was still a member of the late President Franjo Tudjman's nationalist party, which often sought to diminish Croats' World War II crimes.

Mesic's office refused to comment on the recording, but insisted that Mesic's condemnation of the World War II regime is widely known. Although it did not directly confirm that the recording was of Mesic, it said the sentence was "taken out of context."

Mesic has been the most vocal critic among Croatian leaders of Croatia's wartime state, which persecuted hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and antifascist Croats.

He went to Israel on one of his first trips after becoming the president in 2000 to apologize to Jews for the crimes committed against them in Croatia. He also regularly goes to Jasenovac - the site of Croatia's infamous World War II concentration camp - to commemorate the victims.

In Jasenovac last month, Mesic said the World War II regime was "a chronicle of mad, but organized, orgy of killings."

Rights activist: Mesic should resign

Despite the publicity, the affair likely won't seriously endanger Mesic's position: Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, whose party controls parliament and who is often seen as Mesic's only serious rival, stood in his defense.

"I'm waiting for a time when we will stop burdening ourselves with the things from the past," Sanader said,

adding that Mesic has shown "with his acts and in his public speeches" that he condemns the World War II regime.

Mesic also benefits from wide popularity among the pro-Western parties, while the nationalists - who have long campaigned against him - can hardly protest because they themselves often express support for the World War II regime.

Outside of politics, however, there was criticism of the speech. Zarko Puhovski, a prominent human rights activist, said "the one who made that speech should resign."

Mesic, who left Tudjman's party in 1993 in opposition to his nationalist policies, won a second term in office in January 2005. He has been a leading figure in efforts to reform Croatia to make it fit for joining the mainstream Europe.