"We have warned Prime Minister Sanader and other HDZ leaders that the coalition for Europe cannot be maintained without a coalition in Knin and that the coalition we have with them is being tested in Knin," Pupovac said in an interview for Banja Luka-based "Nezavisne novine" daily on Sunday.
"If the Serb community is isolated or given political handouts, it will doubtlessly question our coalition with the HDZ. We hope that the HDZ will realise that forming coalitions with far-right parties is too dangerous for the government's policy and that there is no alternative in that regard," Pupovac said.
The SDSS's coalition agreement with the HDZ will be reconsidered if Croatian parties form a so-called Croatian bloc and exclude the SDSS from local government bodies also in the places where the party has won the most votes, Pupovac said.
"The breaking up of the coalition with the SDSS on the national level would seriously reduce the HDZ's slim parliamentary majority. If ten years after Operation 'Storm' Serbs and the SDSS are openly told that coalitions with them are impossible, it sends a worrying message, the more so as the SDSS is one of Sanader's strongest cards on the road to Europe," Pupovac told the daily.
Asked to comment on his statement that the media in Croatia were conducting a negative campaign against Serbs, he said: "If I am being put in the context of the Chetnik ideology, it is not only an insult, it is inflammatory language. Some people in Croatia believe that all Serbs are Chetniks, and some consider everyone advocating Serb rights to be a Chetnik".
Asked about the government's position on the Serb issue, Pupovac said that relations between his party and the government were based on partnership and that the government was not responsible for the negative attitude towards the Serb community.