Čačak Mayor Velimir Ilić's discriminatory comments made during a mid-January visit to Australia were much discussed by the Serbian media, but condemned publicly by only a few. Ilić asserted that there had been no reform in Serbia because the energy portfolio in the Serbian government is held by a Croat, Goran Novaković, and because the mayor of Belgrade, Radmila Hrustanović, is married to a Muslim. Ilić's comments followed a Radio Television Serbia (RTS) interview in which Jews were vilified.

Among other things, Ilić said: ‘People accuse me of spreading hatred and being a nationalist. That’s what that [former foreign minister Goran] Svilanović from the Civic Forum says, the same one who sold out the state in foreign policy. Why at the time of the [NATO] bombing didn’t he go to defend his home at Gnjilane in Kosovo? At that time he was holding press conferences all over Belgrade, along with Nataša Kandić and Sonja Biserko, the biggest Serb-haters. Another person who has attacked me is the mayoress of Belgrade, Radmila Hrustanović. Well, she lived in Sarajevo until not long ago. Her husband’s a Moslem, and her father-in-law’s the biggest ustasha in Bosnia. I’m a Serb, a Serb from Š umadija, and I want everyone to know it.’

USAID/OTI Field Report on Serbia & Montenegro, January 2002