The news, published by media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was confirmed to Hina by the UNESCO representative for Southeast European countries based in Sarajevo, Sinisa Sesum, while none of the relevant Croatian institutions replied to Hina's enquiries.
The head of the State Commission for UNESCO, Radoslav Tomic, told Hina that he could not comment on the news because his commission had not been constituted yet even though it was elected almost a year ago.
According to Sesum, last Friday the member-countries received a letter from World Heritage Centre director Kishore Rao saying that UNESCO was withdrawing from the project for a joint nomination of the Dinaric karst, namely provision of technical assistance to the project, due to the inactivity of the countries concerned.
Sesum said that UNESCO would continue cooperating and providing support to the countries regarding assets they wanted to put on the World Heritage List, adding that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which had encouraged the countries to put the Dinaric karst on UNESCO's World Heritage List, would continue helping the countries in that project.
The Dinaric karst, an area that stretches from Trieste to Skadar Lake, is considered the world's richest area in terms of karst geo- and biodiversity.
Even though three karst sites have already been put on UNESCO's list - Skocjan Caves in Slovenia, the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia and the Durmitor National Park in Montenegro, the IUCN believes the region's entire network of karst locations should be included on the list because of its exceptional characteristics.
The first serial karst site put on UNESCO's list is located in China. It happened in 2007, when three representative locations were included in the list, and an additional entry was made in 2014.