 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
SARAJEVO - Western bodies overseeing Bosnia's peace process accused Croatian President Franjo Tudjman on Tuesday of undermining the country's peace treaty by calling for a creation of a separate entity for Bosnian Croats.
"We consider President Tudjman's statement yesterday only as undermining the general framework agreement for peace and not contributing to the furthering of the peace process," said a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE's Alex Nitzsche, speaking during a regular news conference of the peace implementation bodies, was referring to Tudjman's remarks on Monday that Bosnia could only survive as a country comprising three "individual entities".
Tudjman has acted as patron of the Bosnian Croats during and after the country's 1992-95 war.
The Moslems and Croats, who entered the war as allies against the Serbs but fought their own conflict for territory in 1993, joined in 1994 in a Moslem-Croat federation but it has never fully functioned.
A U.S.-brokered 1995 treaty, signed by Tudjman and then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, created Bosnia made up of a Serb republic and the federation but Croat nationalists have since called for a separate entity for themselves.
"This issue is very clearly regulated in the Dayton peace agreement: there are only two entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Nitzsche said.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the international High Representative (OHR), Austria's Wolfgang Petritsch, who coordinates the peace process, warned that revision of the peace treaty would not be allowed.
"President Tudjman is one of the signatories and should be very well aware of the fact that there is no third entity and there won't be one any time soon," spokeswoman Alexandra Stiglmayer told the same news conference.