Milanovic Promises to Work to Improve Relations with Serbia

Zoran Milanovic. (BETAPHOTO/HINA/ Miroslav LELAS/

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said in Knin on Aug. 5 that relations between Croatia and Serbia had to be better, and that he would do everything them, expecting the other side to try to do the same.

In a speech at the central public square 25 years after Croatia's Operation Storm, Milanovic said that the relationship between the two neighbors had been complicated for a hundred years, marred by clashes, bloodshed, civil wars and aggression.

"It appears that we can't start an era of normal relations in which respect and constructiveness will prevail. As if we are still carrying the burden of aggression in the 1990s," the president said, adding that he was aware he was talking from the position of Croats and that his words would be treated that way, but that "good will and faith exist."

"We want to cooperate, work, do business...Simply said, to reach an uneventful, prolonged constant, a new paradigm of bilateral ties," President Milanovic said, explaining that relations between Serbs and Croats were very important in this part of the world.