A secretary at the Bosnian Federation Civil Protection, Stanko Sliskovic, said on Tuesday it was not true that Bosnian fire-fighters had been passive in efforts to prevent fires in the Dubrovnik hinterland border area.
"Our people invested superhuman efforts in putting out every fire which could be put out, and nobody can say with certainty where a fire started," he said, adding that Bosnia's Civil Protection enjoyed excellent cooperation with its Croatian colleagues.
"I'm sorry this has happened because I understand the bitterness of Dubrovnik's residents, but this situation is not our fault," Sliskovic said, adding that Bosnia and Herzegovina had been unable to put out only a few fires on the Croatian border due to inaccessible and mined terrain.
He said the responsibility on those sites was also on the Croatian side because it had not used Canadairs, and recalled that a fortnight ago a fire from Croatia had spread to Livno without anyone in Croatia having been accused of it.
Fires in Bosnia in the Dubrovnik hinterland raged on sites which were battlefields during the early 1990s war, specifically on the current border between Bosnia's two entities, the Croat-Muslim Federation and Republika Srpska (RS), a fact causing confusion.
The commander of the Trebinje Fire-Fighting Unit, Mirko Milojevic, told Oslobodjenje daily that "the fire from Trebinje (RS) could in no way have spread to Croatian territory, the fire from Glavska (Federation) did. From there it spread to Republika Srpska and Croatian territory".