The Slovene media on Wednesday quoted Slovenia's representative in the European Parliament and prominent member of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Jelko Kacin, as saying that the Slovene government had not reacted to the controversial film yet and that media reactions were lukewarm. The leader of the Social Democrats, Borut Pahor, suggested sending a well balanced diplomatic note to Rome.
The most vocal requests to condemn the film have come from associations of partisans, the World War II anti-fascist fighters. A former president of the Slovene presidency and senior Yugoslav diplomat, Janez Stanovnik, said in a panel debate on the Slovene national television on Tuesday evening that Croatia should respond to the film as well.
"I am warning Croats that the actual target is not Koper but Dalmatia," said the former Yugoslav representative to the United Nations and leader of partisan veterans, who believe that the film about the alleged ethnic cleansing of Italians in Istria and the Slovene coastal region distorts historical facts and demonises Slovenes and depicts them as a "genocidal nation".
Speaking about Italy's aspirations in the Balkans in the past century, Stanovnik said that Serbia had always been Italy's strategic ally to the detriment of Croats and Slovenes in Dalmatia, Istria and the Slovene coastal region.
The Koper-based "Primorske novice" daily today quoted Slovene Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel as saying that the reactions of the Slovene left were exaggerated and partly caused by the unresolved issue of crimes committed by the communists.
In an interview for Radio Koper on Tuesday, Rupel said that he would like Fini to make a gesture of reconciliation and pay tribute to the victims of fascism in Slovenia during his visit to Ljubljana.
He also stated that the film was part of political activities in Italy ahead of this year's elections.
"The Heart in the Pit" by director Alberto Negrin was shown 10 days ago at a congress of Fini's National Alliance Party and on Monday on Italian national television RAI on the occasion of a new national holiday -- Italian Refugees Remembrance Day.
The film will be shown on the Slovene national television on 15 and 16 February, when even harsher reactions are expected from the Slovene public, which is sensitive to Slovene partisans being depicted as "Serbs around Sarajevo during the break-up of Yugoslavia", as put by Boris Pahor, a Slovene writer from Trieste.
A historian of the younger generation, Joze Dezman, said during last night's panel debate that the problem may lie in the fact that Slovenes too should have their own "Nuremberg or The Hague" because crimes committed during and after WWII were never addressed in Slovenia.
The number of victims of foibe, the karst pits into which civilians and soldiers, victims of the post-WWII conflicts in Istria and the Slovene costal region were thrown into, as well as the perpetrators of those crimes, remain outstanding issues both in Italy and Slovenia. According to Slovene estimates, there were 1,700 such victims at the most, while Italian sources claim that there were up to 10,000 victims.