Tadić: It was my duty to apologize

Tadić: It was my duty to apologize

Tadić said that this was his obligation and that this is why he offered the apology.

He also mentioned Serbia’s increased cooperation with the Hague-based war crimes Tribunal, citing the recent arrests of Tolimir and Đorđević.

“It is obvious that cooperation between regional services can ensure successful cooperation with the Tribunal, and it is even clearer that all fugitives were not residing in Serbia in the meantime,” Tadić said.

Political parties, NGOs react to Tadić’s apology

President Boris Tadić’s apology has given rise to various reactions by political parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Boris Tadić is the first Serbian leader who offered apology to citizens of Croatia. He made a similar gesture at the beginning of his mandate in 2004 while visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia. 

So far only G17 Plus unambiguously welcomed Tadić’s statement, as party official Snežana Stojanović told Beta news agency that “what Tadić did constituted a good gesture of a statesman,” stressing that Serbian society had to cope with its past, acknowledge, individualize and condemn crimes committed in the 1990s wars.

According to her, the gesture was good for promoting friendship with regional countries.

“Serbia must leave its past behind so as to move forward and deal with concrete issues relevant to everyday life of its citizens,” she said.

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Čedomir Jovanović said he was not against Tadić’s apology, stressing on the other hand that words were not enough.

“Relations between Serbia and Croatia were impaired by politics stemming from the wrong value system still persisting in Serbia,” he said.
New Serbia (NS) Vice-President Dubravka Filipovski said that all participants in the 1990s war had to apologize so as to enable building of “clean relations” in the region, since “crimes were not committed by Serbs only.”

On the other hand, Serb radical Party (SRS) General-Secretary Aleksandar Vučić lashed out at Tadić’s gesture, deeming it “disgraceful.”

“Tadić apologized to the Croats for 700,000 people killed in Jasenovac concentration camp, for half a million people expelled from Krajina and western Slavonia. He apologized for the operations Storm and Flash, the biggest genocide in Europe since WWII,” he stressed.

The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) official Žarko Obradović saw the apology as “a major disappointment,” with which Tadić “owned up to something that did not actually happen.”

He told Beta that expulsion of Serbs and other occurrences in the 1990s were constantly being played down in comparison to a need to make Serbia apologize to all former Yugoslav countries for crimes they did not commit.

As for nongovernmental organizations operating in Serbia, three, including the Humanitarian Law Center, the Helsinki Board for Human Rights and the Igman Initiative, greeted the president’s gesture, saying it represented the most serious apology ever heard from Serbia, which would contribute to improved relations between Serbia and Croatia and reconciliation with the past.