Deputy Prime Minister Tomo Medved said on Saturday he did not know to which event the state attorney-general was referring when she said inquiries were being made into indications that the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina had entered Croatian territory during the Homeland War.

Zlata Hrvoj-Sipek made that statement earlier this week.

Asked by the press in Karlovac if the Army of BiH and the Croatian Army cooperated in the 1991-95 war, Medved said there had been certain elements of cooperation.

Asked if the Army of BiH had been active on Croatian territory, he said “the state attorney-general said what she said” and that he would rather not interpret it because “I don’t know exactly which area she meant or which event exactly.” He referred the press to Hrvoj-Sipek.

“During the preliminary investigation phase, we all have the obligation to watch what and how we comment on Homeland War events or activities. As an active witness and participant in the Homeland War, I know lots of details and the whole complexity of the defence as well as the circumstances related to the Croatia-BiH border area,” Medved said.

He said that with the 1995 Operation Storm, Croatia “unblocked the Bihac, enclave (BiH), thereby preventing a horrific slaughter that could have ensued.”

Medved said tens of thousands of western BiH refugees found shelter in the Karlovac area in 1994 and 1995, which was “a slightly forgotten detail,” and that Croats from Slunj, Cetingrad and Rakovica, fleeing from the Serbian aggression on Croatia in November 1991, found refuge in western BiH.

Medved said he “would like to remind the public” that “there were certain elements of cooperation between the Croatian Army and the Army of BiH in the former Slunj municipality area, given the intensity of the attacks” of the Serbs and the Yugoslav People’s Army.

“More than 15,000 people from Croatia were taken in in western Bosnia because if they hadn’t fled Croatia, the question is who would have stayed alive, because those who stayed were killed by the enemy and there is an awfully large number of mass execution sites and single graves.”

Medved said that “already then cooperation was necessary between Croatian Army commanders and certain BiH office holders.”

In his capacity as war veterans minister and the prime minister’s envoy, he was in Karlovac today to attend the 3rd meeting of female Homeland War veterans.