About Bosnia

Bozidar Vucurevic

The GodFather of Trebinje
The Unholy Alliance

(extracts from an Interview)

ozidar Vucurevic, a staunch supporter of Radovan Karadzic, is one of the key SDS politicians in the eastern part of Republic Srpska. He was elected to his post at the end of 1990, soon after the first post-Communist elections in Bosnia. He was also elected to the national assembly of Bosnia and at one time was also president of the "Serb Autonomous Region of Eastern Herzegovina".

Vucurevic began that conversation with stating that:

"Mate Boban was a great Croat, a great patriot, a great man and politician, a man who never broke his word. Croatia and Croatian Herzegovina (?) have lost a great deal with his death!"...

The following are extracts from the interview:

"Mate Boban and I met in 1992, at the high point of the conflict between Croats and Serbs. Our first contact was made through certain channels of which I do not wish to speak for the moment. Both of us understood that our war was leading nowhere. Croats and Serbs are Christian peoples and original inhabitants (?) of the country - our killing and expelling one another was leading nowhere. We both believed that there was enough space in this region for both peoples, and that only an unfortunate configuration of circumstances (?) had brought us to war against each other. At our first meeting we discussed the final resolution of the war between Croats and Serbs in Herzegovina. At our first meeting we discussed only local matters, I did not have any mandate to talk of the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina: this was the first important contact and a prelude to a link-up at a higher level. I believe that Boban did not have Zagreb's permission either at that time for any kind of concrete discussions. What we discussed quite concretely was the partition of Herzegovina. I proposed an end to the war and an agreement on how to establish a Serb-Croat border in our area.

- Boban asked me where the border should run?

  I proposed the most natural one - the River Neretva. The Croats would get the right bank and the Serbs the left one.

- Boban asked me what about the Muslims?

  I answered that the place for this semi-people was in between;  in the Neretva River.

  We both laughed at my reply, drank coffee and agreed to continue negotiations about concrete questions for the benefit of our people".

Asked by the journalists whether the Boban-Karadzic meeting at the airport in Graz (which followed the Boban-Vucurevic meeting in Grude), also involved discussion of a Serb-Croat partition of Bosnia, Vucurevic answered:

"There were many other meetings far more important than the one in Graz. Graz was conceived as a way of testing the situation. The Croatian side had proposed that the two delegations met on Brioni, since in that way the meeting could be kept secret from the public. That was unacceptable to the SDS leadership, however, since the place was too associated with Tito (???). Graz was chosen instead, as a place where the meeting could also held clandestinely.
As for the more important meetings, these took place between Croat and Serb delegations from the former Bosnia-Herzegovina at a police resort in Herzeg-Novi:

  Mate Boban
  Jadranko Prlic
  Ante Rose attended for the Croat side

  Radovan Karadzic
  Momcilo Krajisnik
  Nikola Koljevic
  general Mladic
  general Gvero
  general Milanovic attended from the Serb side...

We discussed important political and military questions, including the Army of Republic Srpska's aid to the Croat side in their war against the Muslims. Some of this was put into effect in the areas of Zepce, Mostar and Brcko. The key meeting in Herzeg-Novi lasted more than nine hours, with the politicians and the soldiers first talking together and then separately".

"After that, however, everything went wrong because of the intervention of the international community. They forced the Croats into an unnatural association with the Muslims, in some kind of federation that cannot be realized. Mate Boban told me openly that they wished to join western Herzegovina to Croatia, and I gave him full support".

(text changed without permission of author)
2000, Community of Friends of Stolac