Milanovic: I will not allow collective guilt to be attributed to Serbs for Srebrenica

The President of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, said, regarding the genocide in Srebrenica, that he would not allow giving complexes to entire nations, whether Serbs or Croats, N1 reports.

"I will not allow giving whole peoples, in this case the Serbs, complexes like they previously were giving Croats complexes for Jasenovac and so on," Milanovic told reporters in Zagreb after meeting with the outgoing president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor.

He said this after journalists asked Pahor to comment on Milanovic's controversial statements about the genocide in Srebrenica, among other things, that there were different types of genocide and that "there were many bigger crimes in history". The President of Croatia has previously repeatedly rejected claims that he denied the genocide in Srebrenica, including at the lunch with the participants of the regional summit in Slovenia hosted by Pahor. The Slovenian president replied that he has known Milanovic for years and that they have "common, but also different views", Hina agency reported.

Due to the question, Milanovic criticized the journalist, saying that he put Pahor in a position to evaluate him as if he were in Supertalent or MasterChef, and also called on journalists to stop "manipulating" his statements about Srebrenica.

At the joint press conference with Pahor, Milanovic repeated to the journalist's question that the government behaved like a dictator when it came to the decision on the training of Ukrainian soldiers in Croatia. He added that the Parliament was not competent to decide on this and it governed with his consent.

He repeated that he was against the training of Ukrainian soldiers in Croatia, saying that Croatia should primarily look at its own interests and security.

Speaking about relations with Slovenia, Milanovic said that he would like relations with all neighboring countries to be as good as with Slovenia. He pointed out that the relations between Zagreb and Ljubljana were extremely important and that he expected continued good cooperation with the newly elected president of Slovenia.

Pahor also praised the good cooperation with Croatia and added that it was no accident that he came to Croatia on his last visit to a country during his presidential term. He emphasized that the European foreign policy began with neighbors with whom we should have friendly, allied relations.

Pahor expressed the expectation that by the end of this year the EU Council would give the green light for candidate status for Bosnia and Herzegovina and for visa liberalization for Kosovo, as well as that the process of the European expansion will continue.

The outgoing Slovenian president is on a two-day visit to Croatia, and he also met with the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic.