Plenković: Croatia wants equality for Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia wants talks on the reform of electoral legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to end in such a way that will ensure that the Croats have legitimate representation and that they are not put in an unfair position by being outvoted, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said after bilateral meetings during the Dubrovnik Forum on Saturday.

Plenković discussed the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the international community's High Representative to that country, Christian Schmidt, EU Special Representative for Serbia-Kosovo Dialogue Miroslav Lajčak, US Envoy for the Western Balkans Matthew Palmer, and Vice-President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Pierre Heilbronn.

These meetings were a chance for Croatia to explain its policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and repeat its support for the reform process on the country's path towards integration with the European Union and NATO, while at the same time emphasising the need to ensure the equality of the Croats as one the three constituent peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian prime minister said.

"We want talks on the reform of electoral legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to end in such a way that will ensure that the Croats have legitimate representation in representative bodies and the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency and that they are not put in an unfair position by being outvoted. We will continue to advocate this view in the future," Plenković said.

"We are talking about the fundamental principles of the Dayton/Paris peace agreement and the concept of one state, two entities and three constituent peoples and rights for everyone else," he added.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's legislation should reflect what had been agreed then and what had been applied until 2006. "The present situation is not good for anyone. It is unfair because one constituent people feels dissatisfied. We must find mechanisms to give the Croats guarantees that their representative on the Presidency will be the legitimate representative of the political parties of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Plenković said.

Responding to questions from the press, Plenković said that Croat representative Dragan Čović was not to blame for the present situation. "In 2006, someone decided that the Croats could be outvoted by engineering. ... This was not down to Croats but to someone else," he said.

Plenković said he was very pleased with the talks he he had at this year's Dubrovnik Forum. 

Text: Hina

News