MOSTAR, Oct 6 (Hina) - Bosnia's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ BH) re-elected Ante Jelavic president of the party at an extraordinary assembly in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar on Saturday. Jelavic, elected for the third time,
was the only candidate for the post and had been proposed by the party's presidency. Last spring, the international community's High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Wolfgang Petritsch, relieved Jelavic of duty as HDZ BH president and membership in Bosnia's state presidency, accusing him of breaching the Constitution. Upon being re-elected to a two-year term, Jelavic said that "humiliating... rigged political processes are being held in Sarajevo" against him and his associates. He said he did not expect any reaction to his re-election in the international community. "I am not a war crimes suspect. As a citizen, I have human rights, which means that I have the right to political
MOSTAR, Oct 6 (Hina) - Bosnia's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ BH)
re-elected Ante Jelavic president of the party at an extraordinary
assembly in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar on Saturday.
Jelavic, elected for the third time, was the only candidate for the
post and had been proposed by the party's presidency. Last spring,
the international community's High Representative in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Wolfgang Petritsch, relieved Jelavic of duty as HDZ BH
president and membership in Bosnia's state presidency, accusing
him of breaching the Constitution.
Upon being re-elected to a two-year term, Jelavic said that
"humiliating... rigged political processes are being held in
Sarajevo" against him and his associates.
He said he did not expect any reaction to his re-election in the
international community. "I am not a war crimes suspect. As a
citizen, I have human rights, which means that I have the right to
political activity and be the president of the HDZ BH," he said.
Speaking of priorities, Jelavic announced his party would give
special attention to constitutional reforms in Bosnia.
At the assembly, he announced the HDZ BH would return to the
parliaments of the Croat-Muslim federation and Bosnia. Last
spring, when the Alliance for Changes coalition came into power,
HDZ BH MPs left the entity and state parliaments.
"HDZ BH is willing to contribute to the normalisation of the
situation (and help) overcome the deep political crisis," Jelavic
said, and called on the international community and other Bosnian
Croat political parties to dialogue with his party.
Jelavic conceded Croat self-rule in predominantly Bosnian Croat
areas, which the Croat National Congress proclaimed last March, had
failed. He said the HDZ BH had to bear the responsibility for
failing to realise their primary political goal - "to stop the
negative processes in which the Bosnian Croat people have lost
the... status of a constituent people and become a disenfranchised
national minority."
Jelavic sees Bosnia as a "federal state with three constituent,
sovereign and equal peoples, made up of three or more federal units
or cantons."
He said Bosnian Croats had been the ones to feel the "painful blows
of the imported religious fanaticism and terrorism of the
Mujahedeens."
Jelavic reproached the international community for "fully
underestimating the... presence of terrorists belonging to (Osama)
bin Laden's network in Bosnia."
"The same state apparatus that favoured the creation of terrorist
cores has moved under the wings of (Zlatko) Lagumdzija's Alliance
for Changes," Jelavic said alluding to Bosnia's prime and foreign
minister.
(hina) ha