Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to Croatia Mira Nikolic was summoned, today, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Croatia regarding the recent, allegedly ethnically motivated, incident in Sonta.

Ambassador M. Nikolic conveyed to her interlocutors that, based on all the necessary investigations and interrogations of a considerable number of potential witnesses and persons involved in the incident, from whom the relevant authorities had taken statements, it was established that the fight was not motivated by ethnicity, either of the injured party or of the perpetrator. It was unclear how the said incident received such qualification when the involved parties belonged to the same ethnic community. The Serbian Ambassador warned that such acts on the part of the Republic of Croatia could have a destabilizing effect, in some other circumstances, on the otherwise calm situation in multi-ethnic communities, as well as on the harmonious relations among persons belonging to a number of ethnic communities living in the Republic of Serbia. In view of the above, Ambassador Nikolic refused to receive the protest note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Croatia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia regrets to note that, this time again, the incident, having absolutely nothing to do with the ethnicity of those involved, was misused by the Republic of Croatia in such a way as to create a distorted picture of the peaceful co-habitation of different ethnic groups in the Republic of Serbia. Such positions of the Republic of Croatia do not contribute to building trust and stability, to which both countries are verbally committed and to which the Republic of Serbia has been making its full contribution through its positions and specific activities. We hope that the Republic of Croatia will refrain, in the future, from such acts and will focus its efforts on developing and promoting good-neighbourly relations, which is the interest not only of the two states, but of the region as a whole.