The cardinal will not answer the letter since his meetings with Komsic, while the latter was the head of Novo Sarajevo municipality, produced no results regarding plans to build a church in the residential area of Grbavica, the secretary-general of the Bosnian Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference, Ivo Tomasevic, has said.
Last week Komsic asked Sarajevo Archbishop Puljic to explain his statements that the election of the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as the Croat representative in the collective state leadership was detrimental to the Croat people in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Komsic sent an open letter to Puljic in response to his statements made during his meeting with Croatia's Prime Minister Ivo Sanader in Zagreb last week.
Speaking of the 1 October elections, Cardinal Puljic expressed regret that the Dayton accords and Bosnian legislation had again caused injustice to the Bosnian Croat people. Asked by reporters if he considered Zeljko Komsic to be the representative of the Bosnian Croat people, the cardinal said Komsic had not been elected by the people but by one party and that it remained to be seen what he would do. Puljic added that Komsic had been elected in accordance with a law that was unfair to the Bosnian Croat people.
"Following developments and artificially caused tensions after the last elections and in relation to my election as the Croat member of the BiH Presidency, I would like you to answer the following question for the sake of the interests of the Croat people: Is my election as the Croat people's representative in the BiH Presidency a priori detrimental and pernicious for the Croat people and did my election really do "injustice" to the Croat people, as you recently said in Zagreb?" reads Komsic's letter.
At the end of the letter, Komsic recalls that he and Cardinal Puljic have not yet had an opportunity to meet personally and that the Sarajevo Archbishop has not yet congratulated him on the election, which is why Komsic sent the request in this form.
Commenting on Komsic's open letter, Tomasevic was on Tuesday quoted by the Mostar-based Dnevni List daily as saying that "Komsic did not show any particular openness" when he discussed with the cardinal the building of a church in Grbavica in his capacity as head of Novo Sarajevo municipality.
Tomasevic went on to say that Puljic did not intend to communicate with Komsic by exchanging letters in the media.
The election of Komsic to the Presidency after he was nominated for this post as the candidate on the list of the SDP party has been met with strong opposition from some leading Croat politicians and public figures. They have labelled his election as legal but not legitimate as they believe that he was elected with the votes of a part of the Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) electorate.
In this context the SDP BiH is particularly criticised for not being consistent in the nomination, given that this party nominated only a candidate for the Croat member of the state presidency and not a candidate for the Bosniak member. Therefore it is widely believed that Bosniaks, who are sympathizers of the SDP BiH in the Bosniak-Muslim entity, voted for Komsic and made his victory possible.
The Croatian Democratic Union of BiH, whose acronym is HDZ BiH, and which is led by Dragan Covic, insists on Komsic's resignation.
With tensions being gradually defused, some other political parties with the Croat pre-modification - HDZ 1990, which is led by Bozo Ljubic, and HSP BiH, led by Zvonko Jurisic - have expressed readiness to cooperate with Komsic provided that he represents and promotes the interests of the Croat community.