Croatia slammed on Sunday Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for saying that the armed rebellion of local Serbs against Croatia's authorities in the early 1990s was justified.

Croatia’s Foreign and European Affairs Ministry called upon Serbia to abandon that rhetoric, saying it is detrimental to the bilateral relations as well as to stop manipulating the facts and start improving the status of Serbia’s ethnic Croat minority.

“The Republic of Croatia refutes any attempt of downplaying Serbia’s responsibility for causing the armed conflict and aggression against Croatia’s state territory, which were the results of the Greater Serbia policy of Slobodan Milosevic,” the ministry underscored in its press release.

Zagreb recalled that many relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, verdicts by the Hague-based UN-tribunal for war crimes in former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as well as judgement of the International Court of Justice in the case of Croatia’s genocide lawsuit against Serbia and Serbia’s counter-suit, clearly define Serbia’s responsibility for those developments in the 1990s.

Following the recent incidents in two cafes near Knin in which guests were assaulted while watching a TV broadcast of the Belgrade-based Crvena Zvezda’s football match, Vucic told Serbian media on Saturday that “it is understandable” that 30 years ago the largest part of local Serbs launched a rebellion against Croatia’s authorities.