President Zoran Milanovic on Saturday talked on the telephone with his Montenegrin counterpart Jakov Milatovic, saying that the resolution on Jasenovac, adopted by the Montenegrin parliament on Friday, was a harmful act of daily politics, the Office of the President said.

“President Milanovic conveyed to President Milatovic his view that the resolution is a harmful act of daily politics that unnecessarily burdens the relations between the two countries and that it is necessary to continue building good neighbourly relations between the two countries so as to prevent unwanted consequences of the adoption of the resolution,” the Office of the President said in a statement, noting that Croatia had so far supported Montenegro in its EU accession process, confident that the country truly wants to secure a place for itself in the EU.

President Milanovic believes that a European Montenegro must find the strength to pursue a state policy that is in its own interest, the statement said.

The 81-seat Montenegrin parliament on Friday passed the resolution on the genocide in the Jasenovac, Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps by votes of 41 members of the ruling coalition. The opposition MPs walked out before the vote saying that in this way the Serbian government was abusing its influence in Montenegro.

The resolution was backed by the majority of MPs from the Europe Now Movement of Prime Minister Milojko Spajic, the pro-Serbian right-wing party of Parliament Speaker Andrija Mandic, the moderately pro-Serbian Socialist People’s Party and the Democrats of Aleksa Becic.

The resolution was introduced in parliament in mid-May as a response of the pro-Serbian right to the Spajic government’s support for the UN resolution on Srebrenica. It primarily referred to the Jasenovac camp, but before the parliament session, the Dachau and Mauthausen camps were also added.