Serb forces captured Vukovar in late 1991 after a three-month siege
President Boris Tadic has arrived in Croatia, the first Serbian leader to pay his respects to victims of a notorious 1991 massacre.
He is visiting the town of Vukovar, which was captured after a three-month siege by the Serb-led Yugoslav army.
Mr Tadic will lay wreaths at a memorial commemorating the murder of 260 hospital patients.
He and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic will also go to a graveyard where 18 Serb villagers were killed by Croats.
Mr Tadic arrived in Vukovar on a ferry which crossed the Danube from the Serbian town of Bac.
He was welcomed by the Croatian leader and a crowd of around 100 people.
Croatia has described the event as an attempt to relax relations between the two countries.
But a number of Croatian right-wing parties and war veteran groups have called for protests, arguing that Mr Tadic is trying to avoid apologising for the massacre in Serbia's name because his visit is taking place in an "unofficial" capacity.
Earlier this year, the Serbian president went to Bosnia to commemorate more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995.
Our correspondent says both presidents are facing their nations' difficult past in an attempt to move towards a stable future, with the aim of membership of the European Union.
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