Croatia has declared three pro-Serbian officials from neighboring Montenegro undesirable, effectively banning them from entering the country, after the Montenegrin parliament passed a resolution declaring the World War II-era Croatian concentration camp at Jasenovac as genocidal.
The three are parliament speaker Andrija Mandic, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Becic, and lawmaker Milan Knezevic, the leader of the right-wing Democratic People's Party.*
The decision was announced in a note sent by the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs to the Embassy of Montenegro in Zagreb.
The note said that the decision was made because of "systematic actions to disrupt good-neighborly relations with Croatia and continuous abuse of that country for domestic political purposes.“
"The parliament of Montenegro decided to ignore the continuous calls of the Republic of Croatia and not take steps that could negatively affect our bilateral relations and Montenegro's European path," the note said.
The resolution, put forward by Mandic and adopted by lawmakers on June 28, is considered a response by pro-Serbian ultranationalists to a UN resolution acknowledging as genocide the 1995 mass killings in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serbs.
Mandic is the head of the right-wing New Serbian Democracy, a party that was part of the now-disbanded right-wing populist Democratic Front bloc, on whose initiative the Montenegrin parliament on June 28 approved the Jasenovac resolution.
The Jasenovac concentration and extermination camp was established in 1941 by Croatia's Nazi-allied Ustase leaders. Between 83,000-100,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Croats were killed at Jasenovac during the war.
Zagreb's move comes two days after the parties of Mandic and Knezevic became part of the government in Podgorica. Becic was already deputy prime minister in the government led by Milojko Spajic.
Neighbors Croatia and Montenegro were part of the former Yugoslavia. Croatia is now a European Union and NATO member, while Montenegro joined the alliance in 2017 and is an EU candidate.
"Croatia supports European Montenegro, supports the process of accession to the European Union," the Croatian note said, adding that it also "expects that Montenegro will behave in accordance with European values and in the European spirit, and that it will focus its efforts on further fulfilling the conditions and benchmarks in the accession process."