He was talking on a Croatian Television talk show. When the anchorman said "the Church is often criticised by the media," Pupovac said it was not criticised by the president.

Pupovac said he and the SNV were not happy about receiving money from the budgetary reserves for the organisation's work and that they had asked the government to conceive a separate budget item for that purpose.

He dismissed political opponents' claims that he was in conflict of interest because as the SNV president he proposed minority programmes and as a member of the National Minorities Council he decided on their financing, saying he did not attend Council sessions when decisions on the SNV's programmes were made so as to avoid such criticism.

Pupovac said the money the Council allocated to minority programmes was under the control of parliament, the Finance Ministry and the State Audit Office, adding that the State Prosecutor's Office had not found any wrongdoing in the spending of that money.

Asked if his recent polemic with Josipovic had cast a shadow on his work in the Serb community, Pupovac said there had been no room for a polemic and that "it was a media and political campaign led by the so-called serious media in Croatia."

He said the institutions of the Serb minority could not function normally in the last few weeks.

Asked why the conflict with Josipovic, whom Pupovac called "a political friend," had escalated so quickly and if "something was cooking for some time," he said he did not believe "that something was cooking for some time."

He said the problem were some articles in newspapers published by the SNV and other newspapers and portals regarding the collection of royalties, "in which President Josipovic played a certain role before becoming president." He said the issue caught the attention of the press when Josipovic supported the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and that he was confident the journalists did not have malicious reasons.

Asked if a hurt vanity had prompted Josipovic to respond, Pupovac said "the president had no state, ideological or political reason to do that, not even a legal one."

Pupovac said the polemic with Josipovic had caused great damage to the state and the institution of the president as well as "damage that could have seriously disturbed the very fragile balance and stability of inter-ethnic relations in Croatia and which upset the Serb community and the region."