Zagreb (IKA) – “Once again, these elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina were not in the spirit of Dayton because the Croatian member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be elected by the Croatian nation, and not a party that has placed a Croatian at its head,” announced the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Cardinal Vinko Puljić, to Croatian Catholic Radio (HKR) following a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Ivo Sanader, on October 4 at the Presidential Palace (Banski Dvori) in Zagreb.

According to Cardinal Puljić, Prime Minister Sanader expressed the position of Croatia that supports Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent country in which the Croatian nation should be independent, constitutive and sovereign. “It is a fact that these elections and the election law, as products of the Dayton Agreement, have shown themselves to be yet another injustice inflicted upon the Croatian nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” emphasized Cardinal Puljić.

Commenting on the situation that arose after the announcement of the provisional election results, Cardinal Puljić expressed the conviction that, as he said, “now politicians are taking it seriously that if they genuinely want to work for the welfare of the Croatian nation, they must start together and stand for those positions that are shared in common by all the parties and those that call for the general good of the Croatian nation in achieving equality before the law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” “I expect that heads have now cooled and that they are seriously working on this strategic plan,” announced the cardinal, and added: “Those who went to the polls also demonstrated that they care about the Croatian struggle for equality before the law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”