Bosnia and Herzegovina is on a journey towards the EU and Croatia sees that journey as a framework for making progress and building a successful country where all three constituent peoples and each citizen enjoy their rights, the Croatian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The statement was issued on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement, which put an end to the 1992-95 war in the country.
The ministry recalls that the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords, was forged on 21 November 1995 and officially signed in Paris on 14 December 1995.
“It put an end to the bloody war in the country but also regulated the present political and institutional structure since the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is an integral part of that peace agreement,” said the ministry.
Croatia is one of the signatories to the agreement.
“Achieving the lasting stability and functionality of Bosnia and Herzegovina requires real equality between all three constituent peoples and the full exercise of their status as constituent peoples, from which arise their rights but even more so responsibility for the future and functioning of the country,” said the ministry.
It noted that in line with its own constitution and the Dayton agreement, Croatia helps the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina as initiators and promoters of Euro-Atlantic integration values.
Croatia strongly supports and assists Bosnia and Herzegovina in achieving its Euro-Atlantic ambitions, and on that journey, Bosnia and Herzegovina will pass through a demanding transition which, along with post-war reconciliation, will also require reconciling the different visions of the future of the country and its society, said the ministry.
“Those solutions will have to be a result of an internal agreement between the legitimate representatives of the three peoples and other citizens, with the aim of making Bosnia and Herzegovina a prosperous, stable and functional country to the benefit of all its peoples and citizens,” the ministry said, adding that Bosnia and Herzegovina would have a reliable and credible partner in Croatia on that path, as had been the case in the most difficult moments of its recent history.
