Croatian Serb Official to Join ‘Storm’ Celebration in Croatia

Boris Milosevic, Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia and a member of Independent Democratic Serbian Party, SDSS, which represents the country's Serbian minority, will participate in ceremonies commemorating the 25th anniversary of Storm, the Croatian army operation that terminated a Serbian rebellion in 1995.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic confirmed this decision on Thursday after a meeting with SDSS representatives.

"The deal we have today with the SDSS and the representatives of the Serbian minority in Croatia is that they will participate in that celebration, that Deputy Prime Minister Boris Milosevic will participate, and I think it is good and useful, useful primarily for relations in Croatian society, attitudes towards the Serbian minority in Croatia, towards the recent past," Plenkovic told RTL television.

Leaders in Serbia previously urged Serbian representatives in Croatia not to participate in an event that resulted in the mass flight of Serbs from Croatia to Serbia.

"I cannot support the presence of our people at the Storm celebration. But I will not accuse them of a second of being traitors, I will try to understand, if they make such a decision, why they made it," Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said he deemed it "inappropriate to discuss this topic at all". He added: "They [Croatia] need forgiveness from Serbs and legalisation of 'Storm'."

The military operation of the Croatian army and police on August 4, 1995, overran territory seized some years earlier by rebel Serbs who had proclaimed their own state, the Republic of Srpska Krajina, RSK.

When the Croatian Army re-entered the territory, some 200,000 people fled to the mainly Serbian entity of Bosnia,...