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TITLE: International Envoy Sacks Croat Member of Bosnian Presidency |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: AFP |
DATE: March 7, 2001 |
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The Croat member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency Ante Jelavic was dismissed Wednesday by the international community's top mediator in Bosnia for backing Bosnian Croat autonomy. Jelavic, who also heads the main nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), was also banned from holding any public office, along with three other leading HDZ officials, the statement from the office of international community's mediator Wolfgang Petritsch said. It is the bluntest move taken so far by the international community to put down a threat made Saturday by the HDZ and other Croat parties to create "temporary Croatian autonomy" in Bosnia. Bosnian Croat nationalist parties voted unanimously on Saturday for Croat autonomy within Bosnia, in the form of an inter-regional council. The vote, taken at a convention of Bosnian Croat nationalist parties, set up the council as "temporary Croatian autonomy in Bosnia-Hercegovina." This, it said, would stand "until the full constitutional and real equality of Croat people in Bosnia-Hercegovina can be ensured," a draft document said. Wednesday's move was not unexpected. On Saturday a spokesman for Petritsch warned that an autonomy move would invoke harsh sanctions from the international community. Spokesman Chris Bird told AFP that the international community would hold Jelavic "personally accountable as the leader of the HDZ and as a member of Bosnia-Hercegovina's presidency for his provocative actions." Petritsch has the authority to dismiss politicians who obstruct the Dayton peace accords that ended 1992-95 Bosnia's war. "The self-proclaimed self-governance of Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina is nothing more than illegal fiction propagated by an extreme view inside one political party, the HDZ," Bird said. The three other HDZ officials sacked were vice-presidents Marko Tokic and Zdravko Batinic and a Bosnian parliamentarian, Ivo Andric Luzanski. Bosnia -- which has a three-member rotating presidency of one Croat, one Muslim and one Serb -- is divided into two semi-independent entities with weak central institutions: the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska. The Muslim-Croat Federation has frequently been accused by the HDZ of not meeting the aspirations of Croats in Bosnia, the smallest of the country's three ethnic communities. Copyright 2001 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) END |