Addressing the launch of a monograph about the Peljesac Bridge in Dubrovnik on Tuesday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic highlighted the importance of the bridge that connected southernmost Dalmatia with the rest of Croatia.

“This project ends the territorial discontinuity created by a 1699 peace treaty under which the Dubrovnik Republic, or the Republic of Ragusa, ceded the stretch of the coast around Neum to the Ottoman Empire,” Croatian state agency Hina explained the officially prescribed narrative.

At the time, the maritime state of Ragusa ceded these areas to the Ottomans to create buffer zones separating its territory from the Dalmatian holdings controlled by its rival Venice – north of Ragusa this was around the town of Neum, and south of Ragusa this was around the village of Sutorinna near the Bay of Kotor.

Neum and the small coastal strip around it was later inherited by Bosnia and Herzegovina and serves today as the country’s only access to the Adriatic Sea. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the strip effectively turned the southernmost part of the country into an exclave as overland travel to and from Dubrovnik was only possible by going through this sliver of Bosnian territory.

“Commenting on the importance of territorial continuity,” Hina explained, “PM Plenkovic recalled the opposition from ethnic Bosniak politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the construction of the bridge off Neum.”

In 2016 and 2017, Bosniak politicians from the SDA party “vociferously opposed the project” and “threatened to unilaterally cancel Bosnia’s border agreement with Croatia if Croatia did not stop the construction of the bridge,” Hina said, without explaining their reasoning.

“Recalling those times, Plenkovic said that all that made Croatia more persistent in pushing for the project and ensuring the necessary funds in the amount of €357 million from the EU to complete the construction of the bridge,” Hina reported.

“He added that the latest threats against the international community’s High Representative Christian Schmidt in Sarajevo show how important it was to have this bridge completed,” Hina said.

“Plenković thanked the builders and all stakeholders included in the construction of Peljesac Bridge,” Hina said.

The bridge, mostly paid for by EU funding, was built by the China Bridge and Road Corporation (CBRC) and China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, is scheduled to appear via a video message later on Tuesday as part of the day-long ceremony.

The 348-page monograph “The Peljesac Bridge” by author Kresimir Zabec, a journalist of the Jutarnji List daily, was published in Croatian and English.