Croatia in talks to buy French anti-aircraft defence system

"After the drone crash in Zagreb in March, we made anti-aircraft defence a priority, above all short-range systems, and through bilateral talks with France we have already secured material resources at the level of one battalion, and our goal is to secure five battalions in a very short period of time," Banozic told reporters after a meeting of NATO defense ministers held in Brussels on Thursday, as seen in a video recording published by public TV broadcaster HRT.

During the meeting, defence ministers from 14 NATO member states, including Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia, and Finland signed a letter of intent regarding the joint procurement of air and missile defence systems, an initiative led by Germany.

Banozic said that for now Croatia has not joined the joint procurement initiative because the country has already been in bilateral talks for the procurement of French systems since March while the German initiative has only been discussed over the last few weeks.

"With that, we automatically open the story of the medium and long range systems, and I am sure that we will finish that story very successfully. We referred to this in our talks with Germany and now we are waiting to see what exactly they will procure and how well we will be able to fit our two systems together," HRT quoted Banozic as saying.