"We aren't provoking anyone, only enforcing the law. We aren't forcing anyone to behave in a certain way, only to noble neighbourly tolerance and nothing else," he said at a government session.
I know and understand there are people who were in detention camps during the war, whose brothers were killed in Borovo Selo, who object to the enforcement of the law, to the Cyrillic script, Milanovic said.
He appealed, however, to those who wanted it differently "not to make threats, not to call for illegal resistance, because this is the Croatian state, they fought for this state and the biggest triumph is the fact that Croatian laws are bein enforced in Vukovar."
The PM accused the strongest opposition party, the HDZ, of "cowardly keeping quiet about this and fomenting tension," saying the government would not keep quiet.
This is not about the labour act or the duration of collective agreements, which are important issues that were discussed in Croatia, he said, adding that those currently in power "sometimes calculated a little" when they were in the opposition, but that these were not the reasons why Croatia had been at war and why it had been attacked.
Milanovic called on everyone whose mouth he said was full of patriotism, who was honest, to act generously in victory, because the winners must be generous and civilised.
War veterans from Vukovar who object to the posting of bilingual signs in their town told the press today that they would resort to force if necessary to stop those signs, urging the government and the administration ministry once again to scrap their plan.
Their representative Tomislav Josic said Vukovar's war veterans would not let anyone "enforce any laws based on the latest population census."
The local veterans urged the state authorities to verify the residence records and voter lists in Vukovar, saying this would show that Serbs actually made less than 33 per cent of the population, which would cancel the reasons for introducing bilingualism.