Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met with BiH officials in Sarajevo during her first foreign visit since taking office. In remarks to the press, President Grabar-Kitarovic tried to walk back previous statements, in which she had promised Croatia’s support for a third, Croat-controlled entity in BiH.
“No one can complain about the President of Croatia being interested in the position of the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” she said, “but the way I approach Bosnia and Herzegovina is [with respect to its] sovereignty,” she told the media after her meetings.”
The president’s visit came on the heels of a controversial weekend session of the Croatian Peoples’ Council, a body which includes most of the Croat-led parties in BiH.
At their convention, Bosnian Croat leaders adopted a declaration that rejected Bosnia’s current constitutional framework and called for changes to guarantee Bosnian Croats’ rights, equal to those of Bosniaks and Serbs….
The president of the main opposition party in Croatia, and Kitarovic’s own political boss, Tomislav Karamarko, head of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, sent a letter of support to the HNS convention, saying that “the constitutional and institutional equality of all three constitutive groups is the condition for the survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a united state”.
