Republic of Serbian Krajina

The Croatian president’s special adviser on missing persons met his Serbian counterpart for the first time and vowed joint action to find the remaining Serbs and Croats who disappeared during the 1990s war.

The Serbian prime minister said this on Tuesday after Croatia's top officials reacted to the speech made by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic over the weekend, during a commemoration in Backa Palanka, northern Serbia, on the anniversary of Croatia's 1995 offensive against ethnic Serbs, known as "Operation Storm."

This Croatian military-police offensive took place in early August 1995, and also resulted in more than 200,000 Serbs being expelled from Croatia.

Of the victims, more than 60 percent were civilians, of which about three quarters over 60 years of age, Veritas said.

The operation resulted in more than 200,000 Krajina (ethnic) Serbs expelled from their homes in Croatia.

More than 2,000 people were killed or went missing, and the memory of a dozen kilometers long column of refugees who arrived in Serbia through Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) testifies to one of the most massive exoduses ever in this region.

A total of 25 bodies of people suspected to have died in World War II or the post-war period were exhumed in the Croatian capital in July, officials said.

Defence lawyers for former Serbian security service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic told the Hague court that notorious paramilitary leader Arkan’s fighters operated as part of the Bosnian Serb police in 1995.

A witness told the Hague retrial of former Serbian security service chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic how he survived a shooting by paramilitaries led by Serbian warlord Arkan in Bosnia in 1995.

The head of the Serbian NGO Veritas, Savo Strbac, Strbac said that Croatia has stepped up arrests of Serbs wanted for alleged war crimes, so war veterans should be careful when crossing the country's borders

"We record an average of up to 10 arrests per summer season, depending on the year," Strbac told BIRN.

Former Serbian security service chief Jovica Stanisic’s defence told the UN court that Serbian paramilitary units operating in wartime Croatia were controlled by the Yugoslav People’s Army, not Belgrade’s security service.

Journalist Dejan Anastasijevic told the trial of former Serbian state security chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that the units they controlled fought to implement Slobodan Milosevic’s plan to seize parts of Bosnia and Croatia.