FOREIGN Affairs Minister Gordan Grlic Radman has rejected Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's accusations that Operation Storm was the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe after WWII, noting that they are in line with "Milosevic's defeated Great Serbian policy, whose biggest victims were Croatian Serbs."
"We regret that the political leadership in Belgrade still supports Slobodan Milosevic's defeated Great Serbian policy and this act of interfering in another country's internal political affairs is contrary to principles of international relations and international law," Grlic Radman told reporters in Baska Voda on Friday in a comment on Vucic's latest statements.
It was the Serbs in Croatia who were the victims of that policy which was defeated in a magnificent military and police operation, which was legitimate and was based on all relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council, said the minister.
"Operation Storm prevented ethnic cleansing and a humanitarian catastrophe in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was during the time of the so-called Krajina that ethnic cleansing was conducted by the leaders of Serb rebels who expelled from that area all Croats and other non-Serbs. Operation Storm restored Croatia's constitutional and legal order in that area," Grlic Radman said.
He stressed that Serbs in Croatia did not need a mentor.
"There is no longer the president of all Serbs in Europe. Serbs in Croatia regulate their issues through institutions and their integration in the Croatian society, as evidenced by the fact that one of deputy prime ministers is Mr Boris Milosevic, a member of the Serb minority," Grlic Radman said in a comment on Vucic's criticism of the decision by Croatian Serb leaders for Milosevic to attend the recent commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Operation Storm.
Asked to comment on opponents of the Andrej Plenkovic government who want Croatia to block and set conditions for Serbia's EU accession talks, Grlic Radman said that as a responsible NATO and EU member, Croatia wanted to share its experience of European values and the rule of law "also with Serbia, with which we want to have good neighbourly relations."
"Just as on the basis of an inter-state agreement Croatia secured the representation of Serbs in the Croatian parliament so we expect reciprocal representation of Croats in Vojvodina, that is, Serbia, a matter recently discussed with the head of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats, Tomislav Zigmanov," said Grlic Radman.
"There is also the issue of former prison camp inmates, the issue of 1,869 people gone missing in the war and many other issues to which we expect answers from Serbia. I think that after the new Serbian government is formed, we should sit at the table and discuss these topics as good neighbours and in good faith. Finally, if Serbia wants to have a European path, Croatia will help, just as it will help all the other countries in the Western Balkans," said the minister.