The association of wartime correspondents from the Croatian national broadcaster (HRT) on Monday criticised a recent statement by the Croatian Serb leader Milorad Pupovac about the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar being a town of the Croatians and the Serbs which he gave in response to Serbia's President-elect Tomislav Nikolic's claim that Vukovar was a Serb town.
"Vukovar is a town in which both the Croatians and the Serbs live and it should be so. It is situated at Croatia's eastern border and on the western bank of the Danube river which marks the border between Croatia and Serbia and which should connect us, too," Pupovac, a deputy of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), told reporters in the Croatian parliament last week in response to Nikolic's claims.
The association of the HRT wartime correspondents said that there was no distinction between Nikolic's and Pupovac's statement, adding that Pupovac only sugar-coated his words.
The association emphasises that "Vukovar has been and will be a Croatian town with a multiethnic population."
It also calls on Amnesty International and other human rights watchdogs that monitor the development of democracy in Croatia to join the HRT wartime reporters in the condemnation of Pupovac's statement which they said may be very dangerous in the long run and lead to the deterioration of inter-ethnic relations in the formerly war-stricken areas.
