"I am here to bow down before the victims and I intend to pay tribute to them. I am here to once again extend my apologies, to express regret and create a possibility for Serbia and Croatia to turn a new page in the history," Tadic said.

"Admitting war crimes, extending apologies and expressing regret create possibilities for forgiveness and reconciliation," Tadic told the press after he laid a wreath at the monument for the victims of the Ovcara massacre, together with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic.

Once are two peoples are reconciled, a new future will be created which is why I believe that everything that happened between Serbs and Croats in the 20th century must be put in a history book, Tadic said adding that this will also create and write a book of future.

Tadic said he was visiting Ovcara because he wanted to create possibilities for the new generations not to be burdened by the legacy of the 1990s.

Serbia wants to develop the policy of good-neighbourly relations and cooperation, a policy which is a prerequisite to reconciliation, which creates possibilities for people entirely contrary to the policy of the 1990s, Tadic stressed.

Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said Ovcara was a place of pain and suffering of people who were the victims of the insane policy.

"We came here to bow down to the victims, express condolences to their families, but also to promise that not a single crime would go unpunished," Josipovic said.

"We have come here because we want to show that different kind of policy, the policy of peace and friendship is possible," the Croatian president said.

"I want that today be a new encouragement, primarily for shedding light on the fate of missing people, respect for all victims and the development of good-neighbourly relations between Croatia and Serbia," Josipovic said.

After paying tribute to the victims and laying wreaths at the Ovcara memorial complex, the two presidents returned to Vukovar to meet representatives of war victims and missing persons associations.

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor held a separate meeting with Tadic after which she joined the two presidents at the talks with representatives of local war victims associations.

Vukovar is the best known symbol of resistance of Croatia to Serb rebels supported by the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Ovcara is a well-known place of suffering of Croatians in the 1990s Homeland War, where members of the JNA and Serb paramilitary units on 20 November 1991, during the Serb occupation of Vukovar, killed 200 Croatian soldiers and civilians, mostly patients who had been brought there from the Vukovar hospital.