Croatian Defence Minister Ivan Anusic on Saturday cancelled a meeting with his Montenegrin counterpart because, he said, his statements on the Morinj POW camp plaque and the ownership of the Jadran training ship are totally opposite to Croatia's positions and leave no room for talks.

“I cancelled the meeting with Montenegrin Defence Minister Dragan Krapović because of his statements both about the Morinj plaque and the Jadran ship,” Anusic posted on Facebook.

“The statements which Minister Krapovic made in the media recently leave no room for talks and are in complete opposition to Croatia’s positions and historical facts,” he said.

Anusic was visiting Montenegro today on the occasion of Croatian People Day and was supposed to meet with Krapovic in Podgorica.

The Podgorica AntenaM radio said that Krapovic said recently it was a mistake to install a memorial plaque in Morinj, a former POW camp, and that its inscription, that events there were “a consequence of the Greater Serbia aggression”, did not correspond to the facts.

Krapovic said that what happened at Morinj was a consequence of the war in the former Yugoslavia and that the plaque should be changed.

Responding to that, Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman said recently that without facing the recent past, Montenegro could not become an equal member of the EU nor be a credible NATO ally.

Any attempt to remove the plaque will be a violation of the memory of Croatian victims and Croatia’s dignity, he said.

Krapovic has also said that the Montenegrin government is not willing to negotiate the ownership of the Jadran training ship and that Croatia has no right to claim it.