HDZ Chiefs Back Croat Demands in Bosnia

The head of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Tomislav Karamarko, and the head of its Bosnian sister party, HDZ BiH, Dragan Covic, said Croats needed to gain real equality if the country was to make progress.

Meeting in the coastal Croatian city of Split on April 7, Karamarko and Covic said Bosnian Croats did not enjoy true equality with more numerous Bosniaks and Serbs in Bosnia, and their grievances had to be solved before the country joined the European Union.

“We will stand by and help Bosnia and Herzegovina enter the EU, as good friends, through, among other matters, the equality of Croats,” Karamarko said.

“We care very much for this, because Bosnia and Herzegovina is our homeland, the same as the Republic of Croatia,” he added.

“Our people are not equal in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we cannot agree with that,” he continued.

Covic added that constitutional changes were overdue in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that his party already had its own proposals to improve matters. The party advocated reorganising Bosnia's current two entities as four federal units, he noted.

The HDZ BiH has repeatedly called for a specifically Croatian majority entity to be established in Bosnia on the grounds that Bosniaks and Serbs dominate the existing two entities - Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Bosnian Croat demands have been included in talks on constitutional changes designed to allow minorities to run for top governing posts currently reserved for the three largest ethnic groups - Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.

However, while Bosnian Serb leaders have backed calls for a Croat entity, they have also made it clear they will give up any of their own entity's...