Ivo Komšić

FEDERATION LOSES POSAVINA

When Milosevic gave his proposal for territorial organization, he said in his presentation when he got to the question of Posavina: ‘We’re not going to talk about Posavina. Posavina must be part of Republika Srpska, because Franjo and I made a deal a long time ago.’ That’s just what he said, that they made a deal. Zubak was sitting next to me. I nudged him with my elbow and whispered in his ear, ‘Do you hear what he’s saying.’ Zubak said, ‘He’s just bluffing.’ I whispered in his ear again that we had to react to this immediately, right there on the spot. But he said that we wouldn’t do anything of the kind. It’s a bluff. And of course, we had no microphones before us. The other members and Izetbegovic and Silajdzic were sitting at a round table where the rest were sitting. We were sitting in chairs behind their backs. Only they had microphones to talk into. We missed our chance to react immediately. When Holbrooke called for a break, he came around the table to Silajdzic, Zubak and me, and said, ‘Why didn’t you react? You should have jumped to your feet and stopped the negotiations on that point as soon as he said that he had made a deal with Franjo over Posavina.’ Then, Zubak tried to convince him that Milosevic was just bluffing, just as he had tried to convince me when we were whispering. That he had Tudjman’s absolute guarantee that Posavina would remain in the Federation. Unfortunately, to cut the story short, we all know how that turned out. It proved not to be true. The guarantees that President Tudjman gave to Zubak were not true guarantees. He kept to the agreement that he had made with Milosevic.