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Bosnian Mediator Slams Croat Leader For Supporting War Criminals
SARAJEVO, March 1 (News Agencies) - Bosnia's internationally-appointed mediator Wolfgang Petritsch criticized the Croat leader Thursday for attending a rally in support of two convicted war criminals.
The Croat member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Ante Jelavic, attended the rally Wednesday in support of Dario Kordic and Mario Cerkez who have been sentenced to prison by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for their role in the massacre of hundreds of Muslims between 1991 and 1994.
It was the latest provocative gesture by Jelavic, who has sharply criticized the Muslim-Croat federation as falling short of meeting the aspirations of Croats in Bosnia.
Jelavic, who heads the nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) party, blasted the verdicts as "another attempt to criminalize the Croatian people" over the war.
But Petritsch spokesman Oleg Milisic responded by saying that Jelavic was wrong in seeking to link the fate of the two convicted war criminals to the Bosnian Croat people.
"It is he who would criminalize the whole Croat people by even making the connection," she said.
"How dare he put the Croat people on the same level with war criminals," Milisic said.
"It is clear that the acts of the HDZ are directly at odds with the interest of their own electorate," Milisic said.
"All Mr. Jelavic and the HDZ have to offer the Croat people in Bosnia-Herzegovina is empty nationalist rhetoric," she said.
The Petritisch spokesman said the Croat leader and his party had failed "to tackle the real problems" confronting citizens in Bosnia such as "joblessness, low pensions and benefits, crumbling infrastructure."
A spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also criticized the rhetoric used at Wednesday's rally in the central town of Busovaca.
"The OSCE deplores the rhetoric used at the rally in Busovaca yesterday," the spokesman Luke Zahner said.
At the rally, Jelavic also said that the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia were being implemented at the expense of Croat people.
Jelavic also criticized the Muslim-Croat Federation, which along with the Bosnian-Serb entity, was created by Dayton.
"The Federation is a Muslim entity without Croats," Jelavic stressed, adding that the government was "illegal and illegitimate and we will no longer either participate or recognize it."
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