Candidate Sees Risk of Creating
Three Isolated Bosnias
ZAGREB, May 8 (Reuters) — Former Bosnian premier Haris Silajdzic said on Wednesday that insistence on keeping separate, ethnically pure territories within Bosnia would bring about the country's disintegration into three separate parts. "In Washington we agreed on a federation consisting of cantons and not of two national territories," Silajdzic, a moderate who recently left the ruling Muslim SDA party, said in an interview with Zagreb's weekly Globus. He was referring to the 1993 peace accord under which Croats and Muslims halted a bloody war for land under U.S. pressure and agreed to form a bi-national federation.
But the federation never really took off despite numerous pledges of cooperation and has remained partitioned into a Muslim-controlled part and separatist Croat entity in the south. "I am against such a federation because there are no national territories in Bosnia. If we implemented this, we would legalize genocide," he said, referring to the thousands of people killed and expelled during the war. Bosnia's Muslims, Croats and Serbs agreed a peace accord last December which envisaged a united country consisting of the Croat-Muslim federation and the Serb entity.
The accord called for freeedom of movement, free elections and the return of refugees to their homes. But few refugees have crossed the former front lines which are now turning into new ethnic boundaries patrolled by NATO peace troops. Silajdzic said that if ethnic nationalists prevailed there was a risk of creating three separate entities that would hardly communicate with each other. "Then there will be a division into three parts. In that case the Croats will to go their side, the Serbs to theirs and Bosnian Muslims will remain stuck... squeezed between those two blocks," he said.
Silajdzic also criticized Croatia for not respecting Bosnia's sovereignty by pushing its own symbols and politicians into Bosnian Croat territory and allowing them to vote in the last Croatian parliamentary election. "I can't understand what's the use of huge posters of the Croatian President in our territory? I won't comment on their content but they are out of place there." "Imagine (U.S. president Bill) Clinton putting his posters in Mexico? That would be close to bad taste, never mind sovereignty and integrity," he said.
May 8 · Campaign Rhetoric Could Further Divide Bosnia
Apr 20 · $50 Million Needed for Bosnia Elections
Apr 19 · Silajdzic Launches Attack on Croatia
Apr 17 · Bosnian Media Network Unlikely by Election Time
Apr 16 · Renegade Muslim Leader in Bosnian Elections
Apr 15 · Serbs Said Undermining Bosnian Elections
Apr 14 · Silajdzic Announces New Political Party
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