Manolic is expected to continue testifying this week before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the trial of Jadranko Prlic, Milivoj Petkovic, Slobodan Praljak, Bruno Stojic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic, whom this UN tribunal accuses of war crimes which they allegedly perpetrated while they used to be top political and military leaders of Herceg-Bosna during the Croat-Muslim conflict in 1993 and 1994.
On Monday, the witness Manolic said that disagreements with Tudjman first appeared in mid-1991 after Tudjman and the then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic held a secret meeting in Karadjordjevo in late March 1991.
According to Manolic, after the meeting Tudjman told him and Stjepan Mesic that he and Milosevic had in principle agreed on dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Manolic told the court that he had disagreed with such plans as he believed that the boundary lines of republics, which used to be constituent parts of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, had to be preserved.
The witness added that a crucial moment happened in Febraury 1992 when Tudjman, however, opted for plans to help preserve Bosnia-Herzegovina within its borderlines and decided to advise Bosnian Croats to vote for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina at the independence referendum held on 1 March that year.
The witness explained that this position was contrary to what Tudjman had previously agreed with Milosevic.