An organisation of Bosnian Croat parties said that three former international administrators in Bosnia who sent a letter to EU officials demanding that Croatia stops meddling in the internal affairs of the country were “pro-Bosniak lobbyists.”
The Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HNS BiH), the umbrella organisation of Croat political parties in the country, made this claim on Saturday, reacting to a letter the three former High Representatives, Carl Bildt, Paddy Ashdown and Christian Schwarz-Schilling, sent to the EU, accusing Croatia of meddling in Bosnia and Herzegovina's internal affairs.
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The letter was an “inappropriate lobbying action to undermine the true strength of Croatia and its role as a signatory of the Dayton Peace Agreement,” HNS said in a press release.
Croatia has been complaining to the EU about the election of left-leaning Zeljko Komsic as the Bosnian Croat representative in the country’s tripartite Presidency, saying the numerically dominant Bosniaks had elected him, while Bosnian Croats had overwhelmingly voted in October for Dragan Covic, the head of the Bosnian branch of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) which is in power in Croatia.
Bosnian Croats are backed by Zagreb in their claim that people in Bosnia should be voting along ethnic lines and that the concept of one-person-one-vote should be rejected. EU member Croatia has been their voice in Brussels.
The three former High Representatives had the chance to help Bosnia implement the Dayton Agreement properly, but instead “imposed decisions” which are contrary to Bosnia’s Constitution, as confirmed by the Constitutional Court, the HNS said.
The reasoning expressed by the three diplomats is in line with statements by individuals and groups “from the sphere of the greater-Bosniak political programme,” the organisation alleged.
“We emphasise once again that Zeljko Komsic is not a legitimate Croat representative in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that his election represents a grave breach of the Dayton Agreement, especially having in mind his rejection of the constitutionality of the peoples as the basic constitutional principle according to which Bosnia is set up,” it said.
