Mladen Markač

Croatian political leaders, wartime generals and war veterans gathered on Friday in the town of Knin to mark the anniversary of the country's victorious military offensive, Operation Storm, which effectively ended the independence war in the country in 1995.

The man identified in court in The Hague as Witness 56 was a Serb policeman in the Croatian town of Knin between May 1994 and August 5, 1995. That was the date when he left the country, along with around 200,000 other Serbs, as the Croatian Army crushed Serb rebel forces during Operation Storm.

Controversy simmered on Monday in the wake of media reports at the weekend that the Bosnian state prosecution has asked Croatia if it can take over proceedings against 14 Croatian generals who are reportedly suspected of committing war crimes during the Croatian Army's 1995 Operation Flash.

"Gentlemen, I want to talk a little bit more about [our] promotional focus, given the advantages gained from Storm," Tudjman said as he opened the session.

Croatian Serb advocacy orgnisations and other human rights organisations on Wednesday started a six-day campaign to commemorate the Serbian civilian victims of the Croatian army's 1995 Operation "Oluja" ("Storm").

The operation terminated an ethnic Serb rebellion but also resulted in some 200,000 Serbs being expelled or fleeing the Knin region in southwest Croatia.

Gotovina became a national icon when he was indicted in July 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY for large-scale crimes against Serb civilians during and after Operation Storm. A broad section of the Croatian public supported his cause, seeing him as a victim of unfair treatment of the young Croatian state by the international community.

A Croatian NGO asked the European Court of Human Rights to examine the Zagreb government's refusal to release information about a contract for legal representation for generals Mladen Markac and Ante Gotovina at their Hague Tribunal appeal.

The case involves Croatian military planes bombing Serbian refugees on August 9, 1995 near Banacki Petrovac in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when nine people - four children and six adults - were killed and 50 were injured or badly wounded.

BELGRADE - Chairman of the Serbian Parliament's Committee on the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region Janko Veselinovic said Monday that the appointment of Ante Gotovina as an advisor to Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic is not the kind of news to which the Serbs in Croatia and Serbia could be indifferent.

BELGRADE- President of the Coalition of Refugee Associations in Serbia Miodrag Linta called on Sunday on Croatia's President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic to change the "scandalous" decision on the appointment of generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac as advisors with the Homeland Security Council, if she is truly committed to ensuring better relations with Serbia.