The Bosnian Croat umbrella political association announced on Friday it would continue the preparations for the federalisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with an aim to “ensure the equality of the Croats” as a result of what they assessed as the “Bosniak threats and intolerance towards the coexistence with the Croats.”

In the conclusions published after an extraordinary meeting in Mostar, the Croat People's Assembly said it would continue working on the implementation of its conclusions reached in February this year to stop the “further deconstruction of the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

That would include legal and political steps towards institutional and territorial reorganisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina on a federal basis to ensure the functioning of the state and the equality of the three constituent peoples in the country, said the conclusions, noting that this was the result of the “Bosniak threats and intolerance towards the coexistence with the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

The association expressed a strong dissatisfaction because the international community's High Representative, Christian Schmidt, has failed to “prevent Croats being outvoted by more numerous Bosniaks in elections,” referring to the recent events when the international envoy imposed only technical changes to the electoral legislation and not those concerning the nomination of delegates in the House of Peoples.

The Assembly stressed that instead Schmidt has increased the powers of the “illegal Central Election Commission.”

The conclusions also assessed that the High Representative worked under pressure of the Bosniak political leaders and activists and gave up changing the political aspects of the electoral law to enforce the court ruling in the Ljubić case, to prevent outvoting of the Croats in elections, and to ensure institutional functioning in the Bosniak-Croat Federation BiH entity.

The association asked the Office of the High Representative be relocated from Sarajevo to Brussels “to protect the security and independence of the High Representative and free him from political influence.”

Chairman Dragan Covic, who is also the leader of the strongest Croat party, told a press conference it was not realistic to expect an agreement on electoral disputes would be reached with the Bosniak parties in the next six weeks, the deadline set by the High Representative, and he expressed hope that Schmidt would annul the decisions of his predecessors which had undermined the status of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.