Aleksandar Vucic at Saturday’s Operation Storm commemoration. Photo: Slobodan Miljevic/Beta.

The Croatian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called on Serbia to adopt a “constructive approach based on facts” after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic likened Zagreb’s treatment of Croatian Serbs during the war to that of Hitler.

Vucic made his comment at an anniversary commemoration for the Serb victims of Croatia’s victorious 1995 Operation Storm, which led to an exodus of Serbs from Croatia.

“Hitler wanted a world free of Jews and Croatia wanted a country free of Serbs,” he said at the commemoration in the town of Backa Palanka on Saturday evening.

But the Croatian Foreign Ministry said that it was actually it is the regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, with the help of the Yugoslav People’s Army and some Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, who was responsible for being back ethnic cleansing to Europe.

“They tried to establish a so-called greater, ethnically-clean Serbia on one-third of Croatian territory, well as in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo,” the ministry said in a statement.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic described Vucic’s statement as an exaggeration, saying that “when it comes to the statement and the allegations concerning the Holocaust comparisons, that’s too much”.

Plenkovic said that Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic will probably not make an expected visit to Serbia, Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji list reported on Tuesday.

But Vucic on Tuesday insisted that Croatian politicians that will be welcome in Serbia whenever they want to come.

“To this campaign of persecution and tirades that’s being organised against me, I respond with calmness and a smile,” Vucic said.

Croatian political analyst Zarko Puhovski said that relations between Belgrade and Zagreb always take a turn for the worse around the anniversary of Operation Storm each year.

“Always, during the August heat, the relationship between Serbia and Croatia is getting colder,” Puhovski told BIRN.

Croatia regards the operation as a great victory while Serbia describes it as an ethnic cleansing campaign.

Puhovski said that “each side is unable to hear the other” when the issue of Operation Storm comes up.

Croatian politicians have meanwhile expressed dissatisfaction that Croatian MP Milorad Pupovac, whose Independent Democratic Serb Party is part of the ruling coalition in Zagreb, attended the Serbian commemoration of the victims of Operation Storm in Backa Palanka.

Pupovac also heads the Serbian National Council, which represents Serbs’ interests in Croatia.

He said on Tuesday that he understands the feelings of his fellow Croatian citizens but they also need to understand the Serbs who suffered after Operation Storm.

“I hope that after this experience, representatives of the two countries will see that all talks on missing persons, minorities, succession, war crimes, borders, infrastructure building, police cooperation in the fight against terrorism, crime and illegal migration will not bring any results unless a dialogue [on how to put the conflict in the past and how to commemorate] starts,” Pupovac said in a statement.

During Operation Storm, Croatian forces regained territory controlled since late 1991 by rebel Croatian Serbs, who had been helped by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries.

But Storm also caused a humanitarian crisis, as up to 200,000 Serb civilians left Croatia during and after the operation.

The Croatian Helsinki Committee reported that 677 civilians were killed during and after the operation, although the Croatian judiciary has convicted only one person of committing war crimes.

Read more:

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