Dacic: It Is Not Serbian People Who Needed Milosevic to Attend Operation Storm Marking, But Croatia

Ivica Dacic

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has called Serb representative Boris Milosevic’s decision to attend the marking of Operation Storm in Knin wrong, adding that it is Croatia which needed his presence and not the Serbian people.

Appearing on RTS public service’s evening special “A Quarter of a century from the Exile of a Century” on Aug. 5, Dacic said that “such a decision should not have been made, given the opinion of Serbs in Serbia, Republika Srpska and Montenegro, including the majority of Serbs in Croatia.”

“Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic said that it is ‘a celebration, not a commemoration’; I believe questions concerning the Serbian nation as a whole should be considered, as it is not a matter of personal opinions. What was there for Serbs to celebrate?” asked Dacic.

The minister added that Serbs did not belong at the gathering in Knin, because the Croats, according to him, “haven’t said, nor will they say that [Operation] Storm was ethnic cleansing,” nor have they changed their vocabulary about the war in Croatia during the 1990s.

 Dacic also criticized Croatian Ambassador to Belgrade Hidajet Biscevic’s statement about the Serbs in Croatia having more rights than the Croats living in Serbia, saying it was uncalled for “after all that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has done” for the Croatian minority in Serbia.