BELGRADE — Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Monday accused Croatia of threatening peace in the Balkans after the Supreme Court in Zagreb quashed a verdict against a former MP convicted of war crimes for killing Serbs.

Vucic’s statement also came after a Croatian court on July 22 quashed a communist-era verdict convicting a controversial World War II-era cardinal of collaborating with the Nazis, infuriating Serbia.

"What is happening seriously affects peace and stability in the region," Vucic said in a statement, adding that he had written to complain to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court in Zagreb ordered a retrial for former lawmaker Branimir Glavas, who was sentenced in 2010 to eight years in jail over his role in the gruesome killing of Serbian civilians at the start of the 1990s war in Croatia.

Days earlier, a court had quashed a communist era verdict convicting Alojzije Stepinac, 70, who headed Croatia’s Catholic Church during World War II, over Nazi collaboration.

This weekend, a statue was erected in the Adriatic town of Draga in tribute to Miro Baresic, a Croatian nationalist who was sentenced to life in prison in Sweden in 1971 for having participated in the murder of the Yugoslav ambassador in Stockholm.

Baresic, who was later pardoned, returned to Croatia in the 1990s and was killed in fighting in 1991. — AFP