Croatian President: No to NATO declaration not mentioning Dayton Peace Agreement

NEWS 13.06.202116:19 0 komentara
Zoran Milanović
Zoran Milanović (N1)

Some countries do not want the closing declaration of the coming NATO summit in Brussels to mention the Dayton peace agreement and Bosnia and Herzegovina's three constituent peoples but Croatia will not agree to that, President Zoran Milanovic said on Sunday.

The leaders of NATO's 30 member-states, including President Milanovic, will gather in Brussels on Monday for a summit at which decisions on the alliance's reforms in the period until 2030 are expected to be made.

Seven documents will be adopted at the summit, including a joint declaration that mentions Bosnia and Herzegovina and which Milanovic says has been prepared for a week.

He said that he had been willing to help but that now he was doing everything by himself because Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlic Radman did not want to be a part of the Croatian delegation to attend the summit.

“… only one day is left and some countries do not want to mention the Dayton agreement or the constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the declaration,” said Milanovic.

“Since it's the eleventh hour, I will have to talk to some people at the summit, otherwise we will not consent to the closing declaration because we are being treated as unimportant.”

“Somebody has a problem with the closing declaration mentioning the Dayton agreement and the three constituent peoples,” Milanovic said.

“I do not intend to return to Zagreb with that. It shows what kind of plans for Bosnia and Herzegovina some international circles have and Croatia will not agree to that,” Milanovic said, confirming that work on the declaration had been underway for a week and noting that “Croatia's ambassador has been ignoring us completely.”

Milanovic also said that “those involved in foreign politics have understood from the first sentence what the declaration is about.”

Responding to a reporter's remark that it was awkward, diplomatically, that no government official, such as the foreign minister, would be accompanying him on his visit to Brussels, Milanovic said that it was not.

“As if someone would notice,” he said, criticising Foreign Minister Grlic Radman for “lamenting the fate of Croats in Communism in which his family got rich by privatising a rendering plant” and mentioning in that context Grlic Radman father's membership of a local council of the League of Communists.

Milanovic said on Friday that the foreign minister would not be in the Croatian delegation to the NATO summit on Monday because the prime minister would not let him while Grlic Radman said he decided not to go because it was beneath him to be in the company of a president behaving primitively.

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