They also called for the establishment of a majority Croat federal unit in Bosnia.
The president of the HNS and the HDZ BiH party, Dragan Covic, said there would be no Bosnia or Bosnian Croats today without Herceg-Bosna, adding that they were "part of a modern future community which will belong to the Euro-Atlantic project."
He voiced confidence that instead of the current two entities, Bosnia would have a number of federal units, saying this would ensure the equality of Bosnian Croats and that Bosnia would never be a unitary state.
The president of the HDZ 1990 party, Martin Raguz, said the lasting values of Herceg-Bosna should be incorporated into the equality of the peoples and the European future of Bosnia.
The head of the Croatian Homeland War Memorial and Documentation Centre from Zagreb, Ante Nazor, said the establishment of Herceg-Bosna had been fully justified because it stopped the Serb military aggression and then defended the Croats in the war with the Bosniak Army. He added that it had been quite normal for Zagreb to have supported such a project which guaranteed the survival of the Bosnian Croat people.
HR HB was established in Grude on 28 August 1993 after international peace proposals on the end of the war and the reorganisation of Bosnia into three federal units. HR HB was formally abolished in April 1994 when, with the mediation of the US and support from Croatia, one of Bosnia's current two entities was formed - the Croat-Bosniak Federation.
Six former HR HB officials were sentenced by the Hague war crimes tribunal this past May pending appeal - Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic - to prison sentences ranging from 10 to 25 years for crimes against Muslims committed during the Bosnian war as part of a joint criminal enterprise.
The sentence was handed down on an indictment for the killing and persecution of non-Croats from the territory of the then HR HB and an attempt to annex part of Bosnian territory to Croatia.