He was considered a close ally of Slobodan Milosevic during the campaign in the early 1990s to drive non-Serbs from about a third of Croatian territory, but the two later quarrelled.
Smatran je bliskim saveznikom Slobodana Miloševića tijekom kampanje progona nesrpskog stanovništva s oko jedne trećine teritorija Hrvatske početkom devedesetih, ali su se njih dvojica kasnije posvadili.