Serb leader Tadic apologises for 1991 Vukovar massacre

President Boris Tadic has become the first Serbian leader to pay his respects to Croatian victims of a notorious 1991 massacre.
During a visit to a memorial to 260 people murdered at Vukovar, Mr Tadic made a statement expressing "apology and regret," according to BBC News.

Vukovar was captured in November 1991 after a three-month siege by the Serb-led Yugoslav army. The victims of the massacre had sought refuge in the town's hospital.

But two days after Vukovar was seized, they were led to the site of a pig farm and shot, their bodies left in a mass grave.

Mr Tadic arrived in Vukovar on a ferry which crossed the Danube from the Serbian town of Bac. He was welcomed by Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, and a crowd of around 50 people.

They will later go to a graveyard where 18 Serb villagers were killed by Croats.

Croatia has described the event as an attempt to relax relations between the two countries. But a number of Croatian right-wing parties and war veteran groups have called for protests, arguing that Mr Tadic's apology is worthless because his visit is taking place in an "unofficial" capacity.

Earlier this year, the Serbian president went to Bosnia to commemorate more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995.