Tadic said the region could not be stable or develop if Serbia and Croatia did not have good and stable relations, despite some politicians in Croatia and Serbia who "would like the Croat-Serb conflict to be the lasting topic of our future".
"I'm certainly not such a politician. I think the Ustasha, the Chetniks and the partisans were a topic of the 20th century, and it's illogical, unreasonable and against the interests of every citizen of Serbia and Croatia to discuss them in the 21st century. I don't agree with the politicisation of such cases, nor do I think that Draza Mihailovic was a fascist. Besides, he was decorated by the president of the United States, no matter what the partisans in Serbia think. I can see that this is being politicised in a dramatic manner," said Tadic.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told reporters that "everything that damages Serbia-Croatia relations is regrettable". He declined to go into details of the Zagreb incident, saying "the Serbian Government will do everything in our citizens' interests... and to make relations between Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia improve and not deteriorate".
Local electronic media said that Kostunica and his Croatian counterpart Ivo Sanader spoke over the phone today and in a joint statement expressed firm commitment to the continuation of Zagreb-Belgrade cooperation.
A protest supporting Stevan Vranesevic and Mirjana Djerkovic, the two students sentenced to 15 and five days in jail for taking a photo of themselves bearing a picture of Mihailovic in Zagreb's central square over the weekend, was not held in front of Belgrade's Faculty of Architecture as announced because the building was plastered with posters of Mihailovic signed by the "Student Right Wing". This prompted students to scrap the rally plan.