Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković will travel to Mostar in an attempt to calm tensions among Croats after the recent war crimes verdict.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced on Friday that he would go to Mostar next week in a bid to calm Croats living in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are concerned about possible consequences of the ICTY ruling against their former military and political leaders, reports Index.hr on December 2, 2017.
“We have agreed that we will come to Mostar next week, meet with the Croat leadership and veterans, and send messages of calm and support of the Republic of Croatia,” Plenković said at the press conference with the leader of Bosnian Croats Dragan Čović. He reiterated that he was dissatisfied with parts of the verdict which “relate to the incompletely and erroneously established factual situation and certain political connotations that pertain to the role of the then Croatian leadership.”
In addition to his visit to Mostar, Plenković also announced that Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović would visit New York next Wednesday where she would attend a special session of the UN Security Council dedicated to the closing down of the Hague Tribunal, where she will “clearly articulate Croatia’s views about the verdict.”
Čović stressed that Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina are concerned about everything which happened in The Hague in recent days. “We want to stand behind every honourable member of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and encourage these people not to be provoked by any form of provocations which are present on some websites and in statements made by some people in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Čović, who is the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He added that the leadership of Bosnian Croats would “know how to respond with political means to these challenges,” and seek solutions for the equality of Croats with other two peoples. “I invite our partners, Bosniaks and Serbs, to work together to do this… to normalise relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina as soon as possible. This can particularly be done in communication between the Croat and Bosniak peoples since the verdict primarily refers to the period in 1993 and relations between Croats and Bosniaks,” said Čović.
The Hague Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber on Wednesday confirmed verdicts against six former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders as participants in a joint criminal enterprise with the goal of ethnic cleansing of Muslims, which included the then Croatian leadership led by President Franjo Tuđman.
The verdict itself was overshadowed by the act of one of the convicts, Slobodan Praljak, who took poison in the courtroom after judges confirmed his sentence of 20 years in prison. He died several hours later in a hospital in The Hague, and preliminary results of the autopsy showed he poisoned himself with potassium cyanide, the Dutch State Attorney’s Office announced.
Translated from Index.hr.
