Croat Leader Seeks Own Bosnia State

Encouraged by the Bosnian Serbs’ purported independence and Western reluctance to preserve the republic, the Bosnian Croats’ leader said Thursday that he has no choice but to create and protect his own separate state.

Self-styled president Mate Boban has adopted a ruthless pragmatism in laying claim to most Bosnian territory not yet under Serbian rebel control and abandoning Muslim allies he blames for losing the rest of the republic.

Although Boban denied in an interview any formal deal with the Serbs to divide Bosnia, he acknowledged that the original adversaries in the bloody Balkans conflict have lately refrained from fighting each other and, as regards their visions of the future, have more in common than they do with the Muslims they are both fighting.

“Everyone now has his own government, temporarily, on the freed territory he controls,” Boban said of the Bosnian Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders. “Otherwise, there would be chaos. If you are left alone, you have to take care of yourself.”

Boban and virtually all of the 750,000 Bosnian Croats he claims to represent insist that the government in Sarajevo now speaks only for Bosnia’s Muslims, who are the largest of the republic’s three major ethnic groups but have been herded into a handful of shell-shattered urban ghettos covering far less than 10% of republic land.

Boban’s scathing remarks toward Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and other Muslim officials seem to confirm a thorough collapse of the Croat-Muslim alliance formed at the start of the war, when Serbian rebels trained their guns on the other ethnic groups in defiance of their vote for independence.

Top Serbian and Croatian officials have met periodically for the last two years in what Western diplomats believe has been a series of attempts to resolve their disputes by dividing Bosnia between them so that each would have an expanded, enriched and more easily defended new state.

Boban a year ago traveled to the Austrian city of Graz for a clandestine meeting with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, and the presidents of Serbia and Croatia are reported by their advisers to have discussed a Bosnian carve-up as long as two years ago.

A top aide to Karadzic effectively confirmed a Serb-Croat division plan when asked about it earlier this month.

“The Croats wanted it this way,” said Slavisa Rakovic, the Bosnian Serb publicity chief in the rebel stronghold of Pale.

Rakovic described the Croats as more suitable partners in negotiations to restore peace to Bosnia because, he said, they hold the “balance of power.”

Boban’s chief media adviser, Slobodan Lovrenovic, likewise described the Serbs as a more credible force to contend with.

“Serb forces are there and they are going to stay there,” he said of the vast Bosnian territory the rebels occupy. “You have to be realistic. . . . Serbs are ready to make a peace plan based on the situation on the ground.”

Suspicions of a Serb-Croat plot to carve up Bosnia were rekindled just last week when the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and Boban’s military chieftain, Gen. Milivoje Petkovic, signed a cease-fire that effectively accepted the territorial status quo.

Bosnian Serbs have conquered 70% of the republic and expelled most non-Serbs in the practice of “ethnic cleansing,” and Croats now control most of the rest. The Croats have recently been accused by U.N. officials of copying the Serbian model of driving Muslims out.

Those who suspect a secret deal to divide Bosnia often point to two closed-door meetings held last winter between Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, after which the hundreds of miles of Serb-Croat front lines suddenly fell silent.

Asked about the unusual spate of tolerance while both sides fought Muslims, Boban attributed it to “even forces” and asked sarcastically whether it would have been better if both had gone on killing.

U.N. military observers have often commented with suspicion that whenever Serbs attack Muslims, Croats in the region hold their fire, and Serbs likewise hold back when Croats attack Muslims.

Most telling of the uncharacteristic displays of Serbian military restraint, say U.N. troops based in this region, has been the lack of any rebel Serbian attack on Mostar during the past six weeks.

Boban’s Croatian Defense Council forces, known as the HVO, rounded up at least 1,800 Muslims last month and temporarily imprisoned them in a nearby aircraft plant, triggering fierce firefights with Bosnian government forces.

Each ethnic community leader must take responsibility for his own people and create the framework of a functional state, Boban said.

His Croatian state within Bosnia, known locally as Herzeg-Bosna, has long operated outside the authority of Sarajevo.