Former president of Croatia and the last leader of ex-Yugoslavia said on Monday that the far-rightists were advancing, while a liberal, democratic Europe had not realised where the danger came from, the FoNet news agency reported.

Stjepan Mesic added that Europe was responsible for evening up the totalitarian regimes and that there were no real leaders on the Old Continent who could dictate a serious politics.

Speaking about the Balkan region, he said that old disputes were solved slowly and that nationalistic and retrograde tendency was alive.

In an interview with the Radio Free Europe (RFE), Mesic said that a big part of the problem was in the reappearing of fascism, and only in the region.

“The main culprits for the far-rightists’ strengthening are those who led the European Union and missed to realise where the danger was coming from because they were preoccupied with fighting communism,” Mesic said.

He added that the regime in the former Yugoslavia was not totalitarian, but an authoritarian, and that that was entirely different from what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.

“But Europe, in its perception of the danger from communism, ignore that and we now see what’s happening,” Mesic said.

He advocates that a priority should be that all south-eastern European countries join the Euro-Atlantic integrations, because “only united Europe can be the main factor among the world’s players.”

United Europe, Mesic believes, will exclude a war as a political mean because the EU member states will open their borders.

“There will be no any motive for anyone to conquer someone else’s territories to help its national minority there,” he said, adding that if a policy is created in one place and if everybody is included there is no reason to go after other countries’ lands. Every nation will have a chance to develop in such Europe,” former Croatia’s president said.