Sandra Bencic, a Member of Parliament from the Mozemo party, was a guest on the morning programme "Novi Dan" with our presenter Masenka Vukadinovic, where they discussed participation of the NATO Acting Deputy Secretary General in the Parliamentary Committee.

As a reminder, NATO Acting Deputy Secretary General Boris Ruge on Wednesday provided information on the NSATU mission and answered numerous questions for more than three hours at the Croatian Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Sandra Bencic took part in the meeting and, when asked whether Ruge had clarified the details of the mission, replied: “It is good that we decided to take part in the meeting, because our questions revealed more lies from the HDZ. It was important that we had the opportunity to ask the Acting Deputy Secretary General the most important questions that were on our minds and that were not answered by Andrej Plenkovic and his ministers who gave false answers.”

“There was no secret document”

“For weeks it was claimed that the operation would only take place within the allied countries, then Plenkovic declared that some soldiers would be sent to Ukraine, while his minister claimed the opposite in parliament. Then Ivan Anusic claimed in parliament that NATO had declassified a secret document and could now publish it. But yesterday we learnt from Boris Ruge that there was neither a secret document nor a declassification. It was just a letter from the legal advisor from March, which became public with the establishment of the mission,” Bencic added.

She emphasised that Croatia was the only country whose leadership had failed to explain the nature of the mission: “They lied, and that has been proven. They lied when they said the document was secret and would undergo a classification process. In a word, they failed to mention that the mission could involve both military and civilian personnel. This changes things, because if the military crosses the line, it needs the approval of the president or a two-thirds majority in parliament, while nothing is required for the deployment of civilians.”

“The prime minister recently labelled the entire opposition as ‘Russian ducklings’ and a ‘wild horde’, epithets he directed at us. For what reason? There is no conflict or dilemma; participation in the mission can be done in other ways. Everything he claimed about us losing our international credibility is false. With a simple signature, Croatia could participate, but in a different way,” Bencic added.

Will Mozemo support the NSATU?

She answered whether her party Mozemo will support the NSATU mission:

“After all these lies and concealing the truth, deliberately fuelling conflict over the presidential campaign, after calling us whatever he wants, not only will we not support it, but they should not even tell us when the vote is; they should not call us.

They are not even treating us with 10 per cent of the respect we deserve. We are members of parliament elected by the citizens, representing half of Croatia. Plenkovic’s accusations imply that half of Croatia is pro-Russian, which no sane prime minister would ever say about half of his country,” she said.

“We have always held the same position: When Croatia participates in peacekeeping missions, we support them. When it comes to supporting a warring party, we support Croatia’s participation in components that are not directly related to military or warlike activities,” Bencic added.