Milanović: National Security and Defense council’s will be convened

The back and forth between the Croatian President and Prime Minister over the holding of sessions of the National Security Council and the Defense Council continues as they are now in agreement that the two bodies should be convened but apparently cannot seem to agree on when they should be convened.

While attending the swearing in of the first generation of conscripts for basic military training at eh Slunj military training facility on Friday morning, President Zoran Milanović commented on the convening of sessions of the National Security Council and the Defense Council. He reiterated that the sessions would be held, but not next week, as Prime Minister Andrej Plenković has proposed: "For four years he refused to convene a session, and now he is proposing that we convene a session. And I agree with his proposal. But one has to prepare for this session, nothing is so acute or urgent that it has to be held today. For some reason he's very agitated about holding it immediately. Why? We'll prepare. Some things happened after the last session of the Defense Council in May of last year. We have some new information, and these are all reasons for us to consider some things. But we're not going to do them off the cuff. There is time. He's threatening that maybe he won't have time. This shouldn't be taken personally, because it isn't. But, if we're going to talk about deadlines and dragging things out, he's been avoiding sitting down with me to agree on ambassadorships for six years."

Yesterday, while attending a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels, the prime minister slammed President Milanović's earlier claim that there was no rush to convene the two bodies, saying that he had proposed the urgent convening of the councils as there is an ongoing large scale global crises that directly affects Croatia.

Source: HRT