In the past few days, the public in the region has been focusing on an alleged non-paper on changing the borders of the Balkan states and reorganizing them along ethnic lines. The media say the authors are Slovenia’s highest officials, which they have denied.
“Regarding a peaceful break-up in Bosnia and Herzegovina – that’s such a flippant and dangerous topic that it shouldn’t be put even in a non-paper, regardless of who did that,” Milanović told the press.
“Any peaceful break-up, Croatia all the way to the Drina river, Belgrade to the Una river – that’s out of the question. And in that sense, that paper is a big shit,” Milanović said.
Slovenian President Borut Pahor told the press on Friday that he was committed to BiH’s integrity, that he was against changing the borders in the Balkans, and that he was pushing for stepping up the inclusion of all states in the region into the EU.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša denied sending Brussels any non-paper on that. Media close to him say such accusations are an attempt by the Slovenian opposition to compromise him before Slovenia takes over the EU presidency in July.
Milanović said he hoped the unofficial diplomatic document did not come from Ljubljana because “objectively, I respect them a lot and don’t think they are that thick.”
“Whether this is coming from (Janša) or not, I don’t know, but I would tell the author of that to keep their fingers off Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he added.
Speaking of Janša, Milanović said, “he can be an enfant terrible and something else along with that. This Janša was actually, I won’t say, benevolent towards Croatia, but you could see that behind him, there was some support that was continuous in Slovenian politics, and that’s why he sometimes surprised me with some of his constructive views.”
Milanović dismissed the possibility of BiH breaking up and asked that Croats there were given back the fundamental constitutional rights stemming from the Dayton peace agreement, rights he said: “have been denied to them, even stolen from them.”
He said, “it’s a fact that nothing will come of BiH’s break-up,” adding that BiH Presidency chairman Milorad Dodik would not like that but that he believed Dodik too was aware of that.
Milanović said he did not believe that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić would back the idea of Kosovo and Albania uniting.
The Slovenian web portal Necenzurirano has run the content of the non-paper, written in English and without header or signature, and it was carried by many other media in Slovenia, underlining that it was not confirmed either by the European Council or the European Commission.
The unofficial diplomatic document, entitled “Western Balkans – A Way Forward,” concerns the division of BiH, the annexation of its Serb entity to Serbia, and the unification of Kosovo and Albania, the web portal said.
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