Slovenia president Janez Drnovsek addresses a letter to his Italian counterpart Giorgio Napolitano over the recent spat between Italy and Croatia. The exchange was prompted by Napolitano's recent speech in which he attributed the post-WWII killings of Italians and the disposal of the bodies in Karst pits - the foibe - as "Slavic bloodthirstiness".
According to the website of public broadcaster TV Slovenija, Drnovsek's office confirmed that the "personal letter" was sent but it did not want to disclose its contents.
Member of European Parliament Mojca Drcar Murko (ALDE/LDS) also joined the line of critics, writing in Wednesday's press release that an anti-Slovenian and anti-Croatian political and media campaign is being carried out in Italy.
Misrepresenting the facts regarding the Second World War has so far been a semi-official doctrine of the Italian right, but Napolitano's speech on Sunday turned it into an official position, Murko wrote.
The passive stance by Slovenia and Croatia, which failed to react to the campaign aimed at distorting the facts, meant that the Italian and the European public were only fed information from one side.
The claim that the Slavs planned and carried out a genocide over Italians has now become an accepted fact in Italy and cannot be doubted by anyone, the MEP wrote.
Napolitano's speech came on Italy's day of remembrance for the victims of post-war killings by anti-Fascist movements, after he conferred a state order on the former Fascist administrator of the Croatian city of Zadar.
In it he labelled the foibe as the "most barbaric act of the century" and one of "Slavic bloodthirstiness".
Mesic responded by saying that Napolitano's comments contained "hints of open racism, historical revisionism and political retaliation".
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