Croatia has called on the Austrian government to help in efforts to restore what it calls "the historical Croatian coat of arms" at the monument commemorating Nazi-allied Croat soldiers killed at Bleiburg in Austria in May 1945, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman told reporters during a working visit to Vienna on Wednesday.

“Grlic-Radman held talks with his Austrian counterpart Alexander Schallenberg and they discussed, among other things, the removal of the historical coat of arms from the Bleiburg memorial, which starts with a white field, and which, Grlic-Radman said, was a sensitive issue for Croatia,” state agency Hina informed the public on Thursday.

“Even though we know that this issue concerns federal states and local authorities, I nevertheless appealed to the government to help in efforts to restore the coat of arms and make it clear that that is a historical coat of arms and should not be associated with (Croatia’s) World War II (Ustasha) regime,” Grlic-Radman said.

The coat of arms, displayed on the private property owned by Austrian association the Bleiburg Honor Guard, was removed by Austrian police in May this year, after which the Croatian Foreign Ministry issued a protest note saying that “the coat of arms itself was for centuries a constituent part of the heraldry of the Habsburg Monarchy and as such often displayed on various historical buildings and in historical documents, hence it does not and cannot have unconstitutional connotations.”

The ministry also noted that “declaring the historical Croatian coat of arms a fascist symbol has done undue harm to the reputation of Croatia and Croats living and working in Austria, and has created the impression that Croatia today uses unconstitutional symbols. Croatia strongly rejects such an interpretation.”

Grlic-Radman also informed his Austrian counterpart of Croatia’s wish for Austria to treat the Croatian language as separate from the “Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language,” which he described as an “artificial linguistic creation.”

He recalled that in 1996 the Austrian Education Ministry recommended the use of “that artificial language, which we consider unacceptable”, adding that Croatia wanted “the Croatian language to be taught separately in schools and be treated as a separate language because it was an official language back at the time of the Habsburg Monarchy and is today one of the 24 official EU languages.”

The two ministers confirmed the excellent political as well as economic cooperation and the constant rise in investments between their countries.

“Austria supports Croatia’s entry to the euro zone and the Schengen Area as well as its bid to join the OECD, and it also welcomes the opening of Peljesac Bridge,” said Grlic-Radman. The two ministers also discussed possible trilateral cooperation between the foreign ministers of Austria, Slovenia and Croatia.

With regard to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they agreed that it was necessary to ensure the equality of its three constituent peoples.

Austria supports efforts by the High Representative to ensure the political participation of Bosnian Croats, it was said.