Vucic: Maintaining peace, stability most important for Serbia, Serbs

MRKONJIC GRAD - Maintaining peace and stability, as well as disciplined respect for the minimum national goals and interests, is the most important for Serbia and the Serbs at this time, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday evening.

"We are making faster progress than others, our economy is making faster progress, we are growing faster industrially, and in every other sense. Do not forget, we are growing the most quickly even in the military sense, and I hope we will never use the army for defence purposes," Vucic said in Mrkonjic Grad, Republika Srpska, at the main commemorative event that marked August 4, a remembrance day for Serbs killed and expelled in Croatia's 1995 armed "Operation Storm".

He noted that, in several places, he had heard that others were waiting for "the second half."

"We ask them not to do that because we want peace with them, we want good relations. But as I have told you, the Serbs are the most suffering nation, and were by far the most suffering nation in the 20th century. We no longer have the right to tolerate pogroms, genocide, crimes or anything else," Vucic added.

"What is also important is that we must be disciplined when it comes to respect for the minimum national goals and interests," he said.

"Democracy is important, the best form of a political regime - no one has come up with a better one yet. But we Serbs must know what our elementary goals are, and we must stick to that," Vucic said.

In August 1995, Croatian military and police troops expelled 220,000 Serbs from the then Republic of Serb Krajina, killing around 2,000.