Croatia's Foreign and European Affairs Ministry stated on Friday that Serbia's strong reaction to the planned deployment of a greater number of Croatian troops in Kosovo as part of the KFOR mission was " a hysterical speculation" intended to divert attention from the Bunjevci issue.

On Thursday, Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin described Croatians and Kosovars as “brothers by arms” after Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman said during his visit to Priština that Croatia would increase the number of its soldiers within the NATO-led KFOR peace mission. Grlic-Radman elaborated that this increase was considered by Croatia as an important move to maintain peace in the region.

Vulin accused the Croatian minister of wishing to “deploy an occupying force on the territory of Serbia.”

The Croatian ministry recalls that during his visit to Kosovo on Thursday, Minister Grlic-Radman also visited the 34th Croatian contingent within the KFOR mission. It dismissed Serbia’s statements as “absurd, untrue and incorrect insinuations” aimed at diverting attention from more important matters.

Croatia’s troops in the mission are praised by international partners, and their deployment is also the confirmation of Croatia’s status as a reliable member of NATO which contributes to the strengthening of peace as well as to the international reputation of Croatia, the ministry said in its press release.

“Therefore, Serbia’s hysterical speculations against Croatia, which insinuate other military  activities, are utterly ridiculous  and absurd,” the statement underscores.

The ministry recalls that the latest development in the city council in Subotica, which declared the Bunjevci dialect an official, non-Croatian language, points to the political background of that move.

The ministry says that the aim of that decision was to adversely affect the Croatian ethnic community in Serbia, and that it was the continuation of the Serbian political leadership’s policy which ignores the 2004 bilateral agreement between Croatia and Serbia on the protection of the status of their respective minorities.

The ministry also recalled the difficult and burdensome history of relations between the two countries, and the consequences of the Great Serbian aggression in the 1990s.

Croatia is still searching for 1,869 citizens who went missing in that aggression, the ministry noted, adding that it is Croatia’s duty to raise awareness in international circles of the recurrence of such political ideas about redrawing borders so as to unite Serbs in a single state.