Representatives of Bosnian Croat associations set up during the Croatian war of independence, a delegation of Bosnia's Croatian Democratic Union party (HDZ), and the chairman of the Bosnian Parliament's House of Representatives, Martin Raguz, laid wreaths at a monument honouring soldiers killed in the war.
Wreaths were also laid at the grave of the community's first and only president, Mate Boban, at Gorica cemetery near Grude.
The Croat Community of Herceg Bosna was established on 18 November 1991, when Socialist Yugoslavia's troops occupied Vukovar, eastern Croatia. Its establishment was explained with the need to organise Bosnian Croats for self-defence from Greater Serbia aggression.
In the autumn of 1993, the community became the Croat Republic of Herceg Bosna, which at that time the detractors of the policy of both the Croatian and Bosnian HDZ parties interpreted as an intention to create a separate Bosnian Croat entity, i.e. to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In 1995, the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and established two entities in the country -- the Bosnian Serb and the Croat-Muslim entity. No mention was made of the Croat Republic of Herceg Bosna.
Over the past nine years, Bosnian Croat structures occasionally attempted, under the sponsorship of the Bosnian HDZ, to revive the establishment of a third, Croat entity.
The most open such attempt was made in the spring of 2001, when the then Bosnian HDZ leader Ante Jelavic and his supporters proclaimed Croat government in predominantly Croat-populated parts of Bosnia. That summer Jelavic himself declared that was a mistake. The international community's High Representative to Bosnia at that time, Wolfgang Petritsch, permanently banned Jelavic and his associates from political activity.
The cantonal court in Sarajevo recently renewed an indictment against Jelavic and his associates who were accused of undermining Bosnia's territorial integrity and defensive power with the proclamation of Croat government.