A German diplomatic memo allegedly proves that former Croatian President, Franjo Tudjman, wanted to partition Bosnia and Herzegovina, Telegram reports.

The document confirms that, in the early 1990s, Croatia’s former president Franjo Tudjman did everything he could to carve up Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to have Croatia established in “its natural borders”, but failed to secure international support for the idea.

Croatian diplomats, including Foreign Affairs Minister, Gordan Grlic Radman, did not comment on the documents which were published on Twitter by Michael Martens, a long-time journalist of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and an expert on the Balkans.

Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) denies that the former president had any plans for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that such allegations are false to this day, despite it being accepted as historical truth by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The memo from 1991 describes a meeting between Tudjman and Germany’s former Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, and VIce-Chancellor, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The Croatian president tried to persuade them that BiH does not have a future and thus should be broken up.

The memorandum states that Tuđman tried to explain to Kohl and Genscher that “the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina are historically and geopolitically absurd” and cited the Banovina of Croatia as a model for the ideal organization of this area, expressing his belief that the “BiH issue” can be resolved in negotiations with Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia under the auspices of Europe and the USA.

It is evident from the published documents that Tudjman was told that, as far as Germany is concerned, nothing would come of it. Kohl and Genscher clearly told him that Germany would not support the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina and warned him not to try to change borders because that is unacceptable and dangerous, the memo says.