One year since the death of Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina General Stjepan Šiber

One year has passed since the death of General of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Stjepan Šiber, reports the Patria agency.

Stjepan Šiber was born on 20 June 1938 in Gradačac, where he completed primary and secondary school, after which he went to Ljubljana to finish the Military Academy. He then became an active officer of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), reaching the rank of colonel in the JNA through a series of promotions in 1992.

In April 1992, with the beginning of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Stjepan Šiber made himself available to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose authorities appointed him deputy chief/commander of the Staff of the Supreme Command of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 1993, the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina promoted Šiber to the rank of general in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and sent him into diplomacy as a military attaché in Switzerland.

Stjepan Šiber will be remembered as part of the multinational leadership of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which existed in full until the end of 1993.

During the war, he received offers from Mate Boban, president of the then Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and Milivoj Petković, chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), to join the Croatian Defence Council, but he refused such offers.[4]

Šiber advocated for a unified and integral Bosnia and Herzegovina based on civic democracy. During the war, he stated that "he happened to be born a Croat and could have been born a Gypsy."

At the time of the outbreak of conflict between the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the HVO, he sided with the Army and remained its member, criticising the policy of the so-called Herzeg-Bosnia.

After the war, he served as a member of the Republican Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with Stjepan Kljuić, a wartime member of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He died on 25 August in Sarajevo and was buried with full military honours at the Bare City Cemetery.