After unsuccessful negotiations on changes to the Election Law and a statement by SDA leader Bakir Izetbegovic, HVIDRA (Association of Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans) Mostar calls for the activation of Herceg-Bosna in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) – controlled area during the war and within Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) internationally recognized borders.
”After Izetbegovic destroyed the Federation yesterday and proclaimed the single-ethnic Bosniak Republic, it is time to activate the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna,” Mostar’s HVIDRA said yesterday in a press release.
They point out that “the refusal of SDA President Bakir Izetbegovic to reach a solution to the election law in the last Sarajevo round of negotiations is the last act of destroying BiH and unilaterally proclaiming the one-nation Bosniak Republic.”
”Attempts to create a mono-ethnic Bosniak state have their roots in Alija Izetbegovic’s Islamic Declaration, the events after the first multi-party elections, the behavior of Bosniak politicians during the Serbian aggression when they declared it was not their war, post-war moves, all culminating in positions of power political positions of Croats as one of the three constituent peoples in BiH,” HVIDRA Mostar stated.
Therefore, HVIDRA Mostar believes that, given that “Bosniak politics have destroyed the Federation of BiH (FBiH), the Croatian political leadership should urgently activate the seventh conclusion from the last extraordinary session of the Croatian National Assembly, which relates to the institutional and territorial reorganization of BiH based on federalism and consociations.”
”It is necessary to return to the settings before the Washington Agreement and declare the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna with executive, legislative, and judicial power. The republic would cover the territory defended by the HVO during the Homeland War and within the internationally recognized borders of BiH,” the organization stated.
At the moment, as they point out, “there are not even minimum conditions for holding elections and conducting them according to the current rules would be unconstitutional and humiliating, both for Croats and members of other nations.”
”The American and European administrations in BiH should clearly and unequivocally condemn and sanction the destructive, chauvinistic, nationalist, hegemonic, and unitarian policies of Bakir Izetbegovic and his radical wing embodied in the SDP(Nermin Niksic), and DF (Zeljko Komsic), who made it impossible to reach an agreement together. They should do so in the same way they condemned Milorad Dodik’s separatist policies. At the same time, as guarantors of the signing of the Mostar Agreement, they should insist on its implementation. HVIDRA Mostar hereby gives full support to the Croatian negotiating team led by the President of the Croatian National Assembly, Dragan Covic,” reports HVIDRA from Mostar.
E.Dz.
