The Serb National Council (SNV) president and a member of the Croatian parliament, Milorad Pupovac, was quoted by the Belgrade based "Vecernje Novosti" as saying on Tuesday that one should not expect Zagreb to stop observing Homeland Thanksgiving Day and Victory Day as national holidays, as hinted in some reactions in Serbia to the ICTY's non-final ruling.
According to Pupovac, for now it is sufficient that reactions are level-headed.
Pupovac does not believe that the current political atmosphere in Croatia is such to lead to the withdrawal of the genocide legal action.
"In any case, let us wait for the situation to calm down," Pupovac said, adding that everything that has happened lately in Croatia can harm both the Serbs and the Croats and notably the entire region on its path towards its integration with the European Union.
Pupovac has identified the media coverage of the ICTY ruling and reactions as the biggest problem.
The response of the media to the tribunal's decision has left no room for victims, crimes or for any different opinion, the Croatian Serb representatives told the Belgrade press.
"The media and individual statements are creating a mood among people which is contrary to Croatia's obligations towards the Hague tribunal and towards the EU. This can do serious damage to our country and reduce our chances to positively complete the negotiations with Brussels and contribute to the Europeisation of the region," Pupovac said calling on the Croatian authorities to find instruments to solve this problem.
The leader of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) and member of the Serbian parliament, Petar Kuntic, was quoted by the Belgrade-based "Politika" daily as saying that the further improvement of the Croatia-Serbia relations was inevitable and that there were frictions in those relations such was the ICTY ruling against the Croatian generals which he describing as a surprising ruling.
The improvement of the bilateral relations is the only right path and one of the main conditions for the country's admission to the EU, he added.
The executive director of the Serbian nongovernmental organisation called the Fund for Humanitarian Law, Natasa Kandic, told the B92 television that the ICTY judgement in the case of Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac as well as the judgement in the case of Yugoslav People's Army officers Miroslav Radic, Mile Mrksic and Veselin Sljivancanin for the atrocities at Ovcara outside Vukovar could not offer the complete picture of what happened in the 1990s.