yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 2
In October 1991, mp s of the Party of Democratic Action (sda, the
Muslim national party) submitted to the Bosnia-Herzegovina parliament
a memorandum defining Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign
state and legalizing the nonrecognition of the decisions taken
by authorities of the rump Yugoslavia. The memorandum was
adopted—and was roundly condemned by the sds. In the parliament,
Radovan Karadžić, president of the Republic Srpska of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
warned, “This is the third, fourth republic that does not
want to be in Yugoslavia. The road we have embarked upon is the
same highway which took Croatia to hell, only in Bosnia-Herzegovina
this hell would be worse, and in it the Muslim people might disappear.
So don’t go around Europe trying to get something you are
not entitled to.” 292 In a plebiscite held on November 10–11, 1991, Serbs
in Bosnia opted to stay in the common state: Yugoslavia. Karadžić,
speaking at a meeting of municipal mayors, said:
Prepare the authority in your territories, in municipalities, regions,
neighborhood communities, prepare the re-structuring and regionalization
of municipalities. Believe me, in Europe they are not concerned
with the law now. All they are concerned with is the factual situation
and they make analogies. … We have right on our side, and we have
the factual situation. And that factual situation will be that Izetbegović
cannot set up his authority in 70 percent of the territories. … The
army is here. . . .Let’s not leave that machinery and that army alone.
… [We] would lose the state if we lost that army. 293
When the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina requested that the
Conference on Yugoslavia held in The Hague in 1991 recognize the
independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aleksa Buha, the rs minister
of foreign affairs, declared: “The Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina
292 Vecernje novosti, October 16, 1991 .
293 Bilten br .7, February 7, 1994, Drzavna komisija za prikupljanje cinjenica o ratnim
zlocinima na teritoriji BiH (Bulletin of the State Commission for collecting
evidence on war crimes on the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina)