Prime Minister and HDZ party leader Andrej Plenkovic on Monday said that he was not interested at all in some concept of a 50 to 50 ratio in ambassadorial appointments.

Asked by the press whether the appointment of ambassadors could be a new bone of contention between him and President Zoran Milanovic, the Prime Minister said that he had already discussed this topic with the head of state.

“He (Milanovic) is sticking to an idea of some sort of ’50 to 50′ ratio in distributing ambassadors, which I find to be archaic,”  Plenkovic said adding that he was not at all interested in such a concept.

Plenkovic recalled that during the first term of his premiership, he and the then President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic had agreed on the whole set (of appointments) and they were the candidates nominated by the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

We propose people who come from that system, he added.

Ambassadors represent the Croatian state, and the fifty to fifty ratio in nominating them is “unnecessary, illogical and unacceptable,” he said.

On 12 March, President Zoran Milanovic said that he did not want to “wage a war” with Prime Minister Plenkovic over the appointment of ambassadors, but underscored that it must be known who stood behind each candidate.

Milanovic said that Plenkovic had offered him a list of ambassadorial candidates last year, but he did not “even want to look at it.”

“I asked him to choose who he wanted himself,” the president said several days ago, adding that he does not have any candidates for those positions nor has he talked to anyone.

That is the only right thing, Milanovic said, because it must be known who stands behind which candidate and Milanovic underscores that he does not want to “take full responsibility for something coming from the prime minister.”

“There are some people whom I wouldn’t want to be ambassadors and if I sign something, if the prime minister insists on that, it should be known that it was at his insistence,” he said.

The Constitution stipulates that the decision on the appointment of ambassadors and consuls is made by the president, at the proposal of the government and with the prime minister’s co-signature and following the opinion of the competent committee of the Croatian parliament.