IFIMES Director: Vučić is provoking ahead of his visit to Sarajevo, and BiH is not a state for Plenković

After Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković leaves Bosnia and Herzegovina today, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić will arrive in Sarajevo tomorrow.

Doc. dr. Zijad Bećirović, Director of the International Institute for Middle Eastern and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) from Ljubljana believes that neither of them brings anything good to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Plenković has shown that he does not respect Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state, Vučić is provoking before arriving in Sarajevo, and the policy pursued by Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, whose visit to Sarajevo is also announced, is no better,” Bećirović told the agency Patria.

The Croatian Prime Minister visited BiH twice in just a few days. He visited municipalities with Croatian populations; Žepče, Orašje, Široki, Livno, Mostar... In Tuzla, he did not meet with the SDP mayor Imamović, but he did meet with other HDZ mayors. Also, Čović hosted Plenković, not the BiH Prime Minister Zvizdić. What could be the motive for Plenković's visit? It is being said that the reason for the visit could also be to create an atmosphere before the November reading of the Hague verdict in the Prlić and others case?

BEĆIROVIĆ: I wish that the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, had visited the entity of Republika Srpska, the smaller Bosnian-Herzegovinian entity, to see how those who are not Serbs live, or how Croats live there. Perhaps he will visit Republika Srpska, but he has made an obviously wrong choice of priorities for his visits.

Perhaps Plenković's priority of visiting only Croats in the Federation of BiH is a kind of indicator that high officials of Croatia visit Croats in BiH only where Croats were not ethnically cleansed during the brutal aggression against BiH. Perhaps before the verdict against Ratko Mladić, he will visit the Posavina and Bosanska Krajina regions, now territories in RS, where Croats were “wiped out to zero” and ethnically cleansed by Karadžić's and Mladić's army.

Whatever the background of Plenković's visit, it is diplomatically unprofessional and does not contribute to resolving the accumulated problems in BiH. By not meeting with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of BiH, Denis Zvizdić, he showed that BiH is not a state for him but some kind of provisional arrangement with the semblance of a Croatian one, where he can do whatever and wherever he wants. His visit is reminiscent of some processes in the animal kingdom, when individuals instinctively mark their territory and indicate that these territories belong to someone.

Plenković should be reminded that the territory he is visiting is the territory of the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which his country has recognized and will continue to do so, regardless of the current policy which is quite hostile towards BiH and comes from Croatia.

Plenković is using cheap populism by bringing a few million kuna to BiH for Croats in BiH, a kind of alms.

His avoidance of meetings with mayors in BiH who are not Croats speaks volumes about his political culture and the clear discrepancy between his words and his actions.

Recently, there has been much talk about Miroslav Tuđman's book dedicated to BiH and wartime events. From the book itself, it can be understood that the key figures of the Croatian state leadership during the war in BiH were more concerned with Bosnia and Herzegovina than with Croatia itself, and therefore the concern about the final verdict of the ICTY in the Jadranko Prlić and others case is completely justified. Plenković continues this tradition of being more concerned with BiH than with Croatia, which is on the verge of bankruptcy and burdened with numerous internal and external problems. If Plenković does not free himself from the negative influence of the so-called generals' lobby, the political-intelligence underground, and a retrograde part of the Roman Catholic Church, he will end up on the scrap heap of history instead of being a modern politician who could initiate positive processes not only in Croatia but also in the region.

At the same time, everything is focused on Vučić's visit to Sarajevo. What can be expected from this visit? A few days ago, Vučić announced the signing of a Declaration between Serbia and RS. The Declaration is extremely negative for BiH. What can Vučić say in Sarajevo to calm the pro-Bosnian parties?

BEĆIROVIĆ: Vučić can say the same as Slobodan Milošević: that he recognizes the state of BiH, the state of peoples who need to agree. And when they will agree and how, no one is interested, except those who sow confusion with such statements.

On the one hand, you recognize BiH, and on the other, you support the authorities of the Republika Srpska entity in dismantling BiH. This is a policy of double standards, which was detected, proven, and condemned long ago by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), not only regarding Serbia's policy but also Croatia's. Such a policy is taking the region back to the beginning, to the eve of conflict. That is why Vučić is no reformer, and he deliberately said last night in an interview on some Serbian TV that he had provided guarantees for Ratko Mladić's temporary release in order to create tension, and perhaps chaos, before his visit to Sarajevo, and he did something similar before his visit to Srebrenica in July 2015, when a few days earlier he said he had agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the adoption of the UN Security Council Resolution on Srebrenica. At that time, he should have been denied hospitality in Srebrenica.

Ratko Mladić is accused of the siege of Sarajevo through a criminal enterprise. So much for Vučić's visit to Sarajevo, which is irrelevant and unnecessary.

As for the announced Declaration on the protection of Serbs and the preservation of the Serbian people, it is clear that it is a document that should officially legalize and legitimize Serbia's interference in neighboring countries where Serbs live. Montenegro and Macedonia will be the first targets. The Declaration is an official justification for interfering in the internal affairs of neighboring countries and will partially replace the SANU memorandum, and in some segments, it will upgrade it.

The visit of Croatian President Grabar-Kitarović to Bosnia and Herzegovina is also announced. What can Grabar-Kitarović say in Sarajevo, after months of spreading the image in the world that BiH is a hotbed of terrorists?

BEĆIROVIĆ: The situation is similar with the President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. In many ways, she resembles Vučić when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, only with a different style and manners. The same applies to her as to Plenković. Let her go visit Croats in Republika Srpska.

What is concerning about Grabar-Kitarović is the fact that before she became President of the Republic of Croatia, she held the position of Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Public Diplomacy. I simply cannot believe that a person with such rigid, backward views, which take us back to a dark, wartime past, was key to promoting NATO. Perhaps she is a systemic error in all of this.

Dragan Čović is announcing a trilateral meeting: Sarajevo - Zagreb - Belgrade. Can this meeting take place, and what can it bring?

BEĆIROVIĆ: A waste of time. Pulling the wool over someone's eyes, we just don't know whose. Perhaps the Americans' or Germany's. Without the sincere intention of Belgrade and Zagreb and their exponents in BiH, everything is a waste of time, and that is lacking. I don't see anything significant in it. Otherwise, Dragan Čović is a promoter of European values, and those negative ones such as chauvinism, nationalism, clerical nationalism, and modern-day fascism.