I did not accuse Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) president Vojislav Stanimirovic of having been a Chetnik, but that he was with the Chetniks, Tomasic said today explaining her statement about Stanimirovic's role in the 1991-1995 war in Croatia.

"It seems that today we are not allowed to say what happened in Vukovar, who was the victim and who was the aggressor. Why haven't the criminals who raped our women and those who killed eight children near Dvor na Uni been held to account yet?" Tomasic said, wondering whether the latest developments in Croatia might signal the comeback of the "verbal offense".

Tomasic insists that several victims had pressed charges against Stanimirovic as an accomplice in war crimes and that they had accused him of having watched rapes and of having selected people who were taken to the Ovcara farm for mass executions after the Serb rebels, supported by the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) raided the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar.

The Croatian MP also accused the country's prosecutorial authorities of putting the charges pressed against Staimirovic on the shelf.

"I haven't said that Stanimirovic took part in war crimes. This is said by witnesses, and I have only said that he was in the company of Chetniks," she said.

The term Chetnik refers to members of a Serbian nationalist paramilitary group fighting to retain Serbian influence in the countries which formerly constituted Yugoslavia.

The HSP AP secretary-general, Pero Coric, corroborated the party's leader statement with copies of testimonies of those witnesses.

As for criticism that as a Eurosceptic she had no right to run for the European Parliament, Tomasic recalled that many Eurosceptics from various EU member-states are MEPs.