The Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) leader Milorad Pupovac has said in an interview with the Sarajevo-based Radiosarajevo.ba web portal that Croatia is turning into a factor of instability in the area of the former Yugoslavia.

Pupovac, whose party is a junior member of the ruling coalition, said in the interview which was published on Saturday, that the inter-ethnic tolerance in Croatia “is not good,” insisting that intolerance towards other ethnicities is being promoted.

He went on to say that in Croatia there were also attempts to rehabilitate the idea of the Ustasha movement and accused “certain members of the episcopate of the local Catholic Church and clergy” as well as war veterans’ associations, some political parties and Catholic associations of “playing a significant role in that.”

He said that some negative trends were stopped for a while when Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovc stepped into office, however “in the last two or three months we have an increasing number of acts of violent actions towards people, their property and toward their ethnic background.”