At a joint meeting of two parliamentary committees on Thursday, opposition MPs accused Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman of a failure of Croatian foreign policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, to which he said that the government had done a lot to ensure electoral reform there and that it was rectifying the "sins" of previous governments.

Grlic-Radman said that the problem of Croats being outvoted was “not from yesterday” and that the government was doing everything that had not been done before.

“A lot of effort has been made, but it is not visible,” he said, adding that only now has Croatia been recognised at EU level as a country with a special interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, just as Ireland has an interest in Northern Ireland.

Grlic-Radman said that the Croatian government has managed to show that the concept of constituent peoples is not contrary to the judgments by the European Court of Human Rights, which has ruled that Bosnia and Herzegovina discriminates against members of non-constituent ethnic groups because they cannot run for the state presidency, as well as that the Croats and Bosniaks are discriminated against in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska and the Serbs in the Bosniak-Croat Federation entity.

He noted that there had existed “unfounded suspicion” that the Croatian demand was “promoting further ethnic divisions”.

“We are now rectifying the sins of previous governments which took a passive attitude to the issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the foreign minister said, adding that some members of the Croatian parliament argued that Croatia had carried out aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, alluding to former foreign minister Vesna Pusic, and that former president Stipe Mesic was an advocate of a civic Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“These are dangerous ideas. There is still a lack of understanding in Croatia,” Grlic-Radman said.

He said that the failure of talks on electoral reform was partly due to a shift in the focus of the international community as a result of Republika Srpska’s withdrawal from the state institutions, after High Representative Valentin Inzko brought in a law banning the denial of the Srebrenica genocide. Grlic-Radman said that this was a “basically correct” law, but badly timed, which made it difficult for his successor Christian Schmidt to take over his duties.

“Such a situation also benefited the Bosniak parties which are trying to maintain the status quo, because now it has become equally important to international actors to get Republika Srpska officials to end the blockade of the state institutions.”

Grlic-Radman said that unless an agreement was reached on the reform of electoral legislation, elections should be postponed.

General elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina are due in October, and the Croat and Bosniak parties have failed to agree on amending the electoral law, which makes it possible for more numerous Bosniaks to elect the Croat member of the state presidency and a sufficient number of members of the upper house of parliament in the Federation entity to form an entity government.

Arsen Bauk (centre-left Social Democratic Party) said that Croatia’s influence should be limited to honouring what was agreed at international level. “We should intervene only when we see that that is being abused or distorted in a way. We primarily see this as a problem with the election of members of the House of Peoples.”