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efugees to the fact that rebel Serbs holding one-fourth of Croatian state territory did
not recognize Croatian authorities, as well as the fact that in those hard wartime years
Croatia was faced with the very diffi cult challenge of creating its own armed forces”.
However, he stressed, they found, “in spite of Serbian provocations, Croatian restraint to
be extremely important at this current juncture in order to prevent further escalation of
the confl ict which might destabilize the whole region”.
Presentation on the Bihać crisis by General Patrick Hughes, Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency,
during the meeting with the Croatian delegation led by the Croatian Defense Minister Gojko Šušak; Pentagon
(Washington, D.C.), 29 November 1994.
In such circumstances, the friendly exchange of positions and views between the
Croatian state leadership and the US administration was particularly signifi cant in order
to examine all the possibilities for the peaceful solution of the crisis and identify acceptable
political solutions. But we always had in mind a statement made by Lord Owen
already in early 1993: What is lost militarily cannot be regained any longer at the green
table. At that time the Republic of Croatia also demonstrated full cooperativeness with
the international community, but also its absolute determination to avoid ending up in
an almost lost position through the fall of Bihać. It must be remembered that 25% of
Croatia’s state territory was still temporarily occupied at the time. On the other hand,
from the military standpoint the opportunities for liberating the temporarily occupied
Croatian territories were almost ideal because the rebel Serbs had transferred all their
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