The Igman Initiative is an international coordinating body gathering representatives of 140 nongovernmental organisations from Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its 11th conference was called "10 Years after the Signing of the Dayton Agreement - The Next Step of Cooperation".
The three countries' presidents had attended previous conferences of the initiative aimed at dealing with the consequences of the 1990s war and restoring cooperation and confidence in the former Yugoslavia. They would adopt a joint statement regarding the main topic of the meeting.
Mesic told the press that he, Marovic and Tihic did not sign the joint statement because the "members of the Bosnian Presidency could not agree on the content of the statement which we wanted to sign with some changes". He did not specify which changes he was referring to.
Igman Initiative officials said the disagreements in Bosnia's three-member Presidency started when the office of Croat member Ivo Miro Jovic insisted that the statement include more content with national values and criteria, while the office of Muslim member Tihic wanted the declaration not to contain ethnic prefixes and criteria.
The office of Serb member Borislav Paravac did not take part in agreeing the joint statement, but was against proposals to change the Dayton agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.