Del Vechio on farewell visit: I cannot forgive you, friend...

By Sead Omeragić

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Former Croatian Ambassador to BiH Ivan Del Vechio has reappeared in BiH in the past few days. He came for a farewell visit. And he scored a few own goals in this extra time. First, he was at the assembly of the Croatian National Council (HNS), where journalists photographed him lounging in the middle rows. 

Yesterday, January 30, Del Vechio met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH Igor Crnadak. It is interesting that "the current situation in BiH, bilateral relations between BiH and Croatia, European integration and regional cooperation were discussed," as announced by the Public Relations Office of the MFA of BiH. Of course, it is not customary in diplomacy to receive farewell visits from an ambassador whose mandate has been abruptly terminated.

Del Vechio will probably also run to Banja Luka for a farewell. To the place where he was on January 9, when he caused outrage and a series of objections. At that time, the Croatian government claimed that Del Vechio did not have permission to be in Banja Luka on the unconstitutional day of Republika Srpska. In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs was not aware of Ambassador Ivan Del Vechio's trip to Banja Luka, which is why he was recalled to Zagreb for consultations.

Does he have permission today from Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's government to say goodbye at HNS gatherings that announce an unconstitutional Declaration, which brutally denies the verdicts of an international court such as the Hague Tribunal?

All of this shows that the recent condemnations by the Government of the Republic of Croatia and official Croatian policy of Del Vechio's visit to Banja Luka were mere hypocrisy. A formal concession to the outraged public of the neighboring country. It turned out that the Croatian authorities were only sorry that General Slavko Lisica, who shelled Šibenik during the war and was tried in absentia for it, was posthumously decorated at that gathering.

Del Vechio was a high-ranking officer, a brigadier in the Požega Brigade. He must have known who Slavko Lisica was, on the other side of the trenches. Although a mechanical engineer, he simultaneously pursued military education and graduated from the Military Diplomatic School. He was the military envoy of the Republic of Croatia in Austria and Switzerland and a military advisor to the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Croatia to the OSCE in Vienna, and in April 2000 he was appointed to the post of military envoy of the Republic of Croatia in Austria and Switzerland and military advisor to the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Croatia to the OSCE in Vienna. Del Vechio went to his first ambassadorial post in Israel in 2003, and then to Poland. He came to BiH in 2013. 

It should be noted that Ivan Del Vechio is the first president of the SDP of Požega-Slavonia County and a member of the Main Board of the SDP since its founding. It is that rare party in Croatia that has a correct attitude towards BiH.

Božo Kovačević, former ambassador of Croatia to Moscow, explained this double policy: "Milorad Dodik's policy is a policy of disintegrating BiH. And all declarative statements by representatives of the Croatian government are contrary, although the content of the policy is not always in line with these statements, the common denominator of which is the integrity of BiH... Given the privileged relations between HDZ and HDZ BiH, it is not excluded that the ambassador received instructions along party lines."

Neither Plenković nor anyone from the HDZ leadership has questioned Čović's presence at a gathering where someone declared a war criminal in Croatia was decorated.

This only proves what Croatia truly thinks about the entity of Republika Srpska, where Croats have been totally and thoroughly cleansed, better to say scraped off, and where there are fewer than eight thousand of them.

In this last visit, Ivan Del Vechio clarified everything that happened around his supposedly problematic trip to Banja Luka. It was another humiliation in extra time for Bosnia and Herzegovina from a completely duplicitous policy of official Zagreb.