Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucas Corso
This was the aim of an agreement between Milošević and Tuđman: a small muslijm stated centered on Sarajevo and Hercegovina to Croatia and Kraijna to Serbia, but the USA didn't permitted it and together with the Saudis, Iranians and Chechens supported the Army of muslim Bosnia...
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First of all, there is nor ever was such thing as Krajina. It was a "geographical term" that Serbs had artificially resurrected from the past (from the times of the Austrian military frontier of yore) to designate the occupied parts of Croatia, which were ethnically cleansed from Croats, villages burned, churches destroyed, unimaginable crimes and murders committed thereby. Those were the temporarily occupied territories of Croatia (liberated in 1995. with the operation
Storm). No Croatian politician ever considered an option to cede those territories to Serbia. Apart from the fact that it would have been a treason of national interests, it would also permanently disable Croatia from normally functioning, since the country would be split in two (look at the map and you'll see what I mean). And those territories were never part of Serbia.
The Bosnia was, however, a point of contention and different plans of division were set forth at negotiating tables at variious periods, some of them even backed by the so-called international community. There were several meetings between the leading Serbian and Croatian politicians with the aim of reaching an eventual agreement on Bosnia. There are even indications that an important faction of the political leadership of the Bosniak Muslims was inclined to accept a possibility of the tripartite division of the country.
One of the most important meetings of the kind was held in winter 1992/1993, between the Croatian President Franjo Tuđman and the Yugoslav (Yugoslavia was the name used back then to denote only Serbia and Montenegro) President Dobrica Ćosić. Of course, Ćosić was just the spokesman of the President Milošević, who was formally only the President of the one of two
republics (Serbia) of the reduced Yugoslavia, but detained the real power.
At that meeting a principle of humane exchange of population was mentioned as one of the possible options to resolve the Bosnian murderous quagmire. And a tripartite division of the country was on the table as well.
On some other negotiations, assisted by the international community, negotiations at which the representatives of the Bosniaks took part as well, they also showed certain inclination to accept the concept of divided Bosnia. Most of those negotiations failed, because of the intransigence of the Bosnian Serbs, who were extremely unwilling to cede even an inch of militarily conquered territory (they had a huge military adavntage at the outbeark of the war). A tremendous amount of pressure was exerted by the Serbian government itself on the Bosnian Serbs, with the aim to force them to accept different peace proposals and agreements, but without success.
But let's return to the 1992. Serb-Croatian meeting (Tuđman-Ćosić). Tuđman was subsequently much reviled by the world media (and by some Croatian leftists) for his mentioning the humane exachange of the population at the press conference after the meeting, but I don't see what's so intrinsically wrong with such an approach. Better a humane exchange than ongoing inhumane massacres on all sides.