REPLY TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SERBIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS

Ljubljana, 24 September 2001


History as a science will pass an authoritative judgment on the significance and role of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, as well as its authors, with respect to political and military developments on the territory of the former common state, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in the 80's and especially in the 90's. Personal views of politicians, statesmen or academicians, cannot replace its estimates. Further debate on this does not seem reasonable, writes President Milan Kucan in his reply to the President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academician Milan Medakovic. "In the light of this, I shall not respond to the your views expressed in your last letter," the President added.

President Kucan also expressed his bewilderment at the fact that a lie slipped into Academician Medakovic's letter, which Belgrade newspapers have printed several times, namely that as a child he had fled from the occupation forces and lived in Serbia. I spent all the years during the war, from 1941 to 1945, under Hungarian occupation in Prekmurje in Slovenia. But it is true that my father, a partisan and a communist, was seriously wounded fighting to liberate in November 1944 and died during transportation to hospital in Gornji Milanovac. This is where he had been buried until 1955, explained president Kucan, adding that this lie sheds a particular light on other claims by the President of the SASA in his letter.