Čović responds to Izetbegović via HNS: Blackmail cannot intimidate us

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Following the statement by SDA President Bakir Izetbegović that if HDZ BiH is not ready for compromise, they will get nothing, a response was not long in coming.

Instead of a direct response from Dragan Čović, the president of HDZ, the Croatian National Assembly association, headed by Čović, issued a statement.

As stated in the HNS press release, in the last month of the timeframe for reaching a final political agreement in resolving all discrimination and all unconstitutional anomalies of the Election Law in order to confirm European values, Mr. Izetbegović is pushing (his own) boundaries in the public and media space.

"With elementary ignorance of history and mythomaniacal messages, warmongering highlighting of plans he talks about as something completely normal, denial of war crimes and massacres, he continues to promote our Bosnia and Herzegovina to the world as an 'inheritance and ancestral land' as an SDA beylik where he, no more and no less, will give something to someone. This is perhaps the state sovereignty and dominance as conceived by unitarist Bosniak politics.

If these messages are an attempt to strengthen some kind of negotiating position - we emphasize that blackmail is not something that the unity of the Croatian people can be intimidated by. If this is a pre-election mythomaniacal rally - just continue to deceive your own people with lies.

Mr. Izetbegović, denying someone's identity is cultural genocide. Such messages in a multinational society deepen divisions and lead this society into further instability.

We call on you to take responsibility and stop poisoning your own people. This is not the path to any compromise. Bosnia and Herzegovina is not anyone's private beylik. Legitimate representation of the constituent peoples cannot be given or not given by anyone; it is a constitutional obligation confirmed in all judgments of the Constitutional Court of BiH and the European Court of Human Rights," stated the HNS.