Croatian President Ivo Josipovic has said that the guilty verdict in the case of the Croatian generals on trial for war crimes in The Hague has come as a shock, but that will not undermine the legality of Croatia's independence war.

"[The verdict] will not bring into question the legality of Homeland War, or Operation Storm. That is not possible," Josipovic said, referring to the 1995 military action in which parts of Croatia held by Serbs were reclaimed.

Josipovic said that he expects the appeal to review and challenge the decision, adding he did not believe in an existence of a "joint criminal enterprise."

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said that Gotovina and Markac, together with the first Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, were a part of the joint criminal enterprise with an objective to remove the Serb population from Krajina region through forced deportations and the persecution of civilians.

Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were sentenced to 24 and 18 years, while Ivan Cermak, was found not guilty.