The meeting was held the year before the start of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY still existed as a union of six republics.

Relations between Tudjman and Milosevic were not good, especially after, the Serb autonomous region of Krajina, SAO Krajina was established by rebel Serbs in south-western Croatia, with the secret help of Serbia. Its leaders “publicly expressed views that SAO Krajina belonged to Serbia”, and said that they do not recognise the authority of Croatia. From that viewpoint, the conversation between the two presidents without witnesses, which lasted for several hours, came as a surprise.

Media comments, mainly published in Bosnia, claimed that Tudjman and Milosevic had agreed on the dismissal of Prime Minister Markovic and the partition of Bosnia in a way that a Greater Serbia would be created, and Croatia would expand into the borders of the Banovina. The Banovina of Croatia had been created within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1939 as an administrative-territorial unit that included parts of Bosnia and existed until the beginning of the World War II in Yugoslavia in 1941.

In one way, the Milosevic-Tudjman meeting was an announcement that after the de facto death of the SFRY, the formality of its funeral remained: the dismissal of the pro-Yugoslav prime minister and the deconstruction of the “Communist creation”, as Milosevic and Tudjman regarded Bosnia.

Additional facts contained in Milosevic’s indictment for war crimes in Bosnia by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY state that he and Tudjman met in Karadjordjevo on March 25, 1991, and discussed the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The agreement was also mentioned in testimonies at the trial of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO general Tihomir Blaskic, which ended with the conclusion in the verdict saying that the desire for Bosnia to be partitioned was expressed during a confidential conversation held in Karadjordjevo.

The judgment in the case against Jadranko Prlic and five other wartime leaders of Herzeg-Bosnia said that Tudjman led a joint criminal enterprise with aim of creating a Greater Croatia within the borders of Banovina.

Due to Milosevic’s death and his unfinished trial, the opinion of the judges on this agreement was never delivered in his case. But enough testimonies and documents exist to create a picture of what was happening.

A secret encounter everyone knew about 

The town of Bihac in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reportedly coveted by Franjo Tudjman, in August 1995. Photo: EPA/ATTILA KISBENEDEK.

According to his Hague testimony, Stjepan Mesic, then a member of the SFRY presidency from Croatia, suggested to Borisav Jovic, a member of the presidency from Serbia, that he ask Milosevic to ensure that the Croatian and Serbian presidents meet and try to politically resolve the problems between them.

The two main issues were the Yugoslav political crisis, because some republics wanted to declare independence, and the situation in the SAO Krajina.

“Milan Babic, by the way, a dentist by profession, told me: ‘I will have a state here [where Serbs declared the SAO Krajina in Croatia] sooner or later.’ I answered: Not only will you not have a state, that way you won’t have a dental clinic either,” Mesic told BIRN.

The position of the Croatian government regarding Yugoslavia, at that point in 1991, according to Mesic, was to go for a confederation, in which after several years, its members would declare whether they wanted to remain together or to peacefully separate.

After Milosevic agreed to meet anywhere “in the country or outside the country”, as Jovic explained to Mesic, Tudjman and his advisor Hrvoje Sarinic went to Karadjordjevo.

The Croatian president “came out very optimistic”, testified Sarinic, after several hours during which Tudjman and Milosevic talked alone. On his return, according to Mesic, he said that Croatia would receive territory to the borders of Banovina, which included part of Bosnian territory, plus three towns in western Bosnia: Cazin, Kladusa and Bihac.

“It is a turning point after which Croatian policy towards Bosnia changes. Tudjman embarks on a completely new course and begins cooperation with Milosevic,” Mesic told BIRN.

Stjepan Kljuic, who later was removed from the position of the president of the Croatian Democratic Union Bosnia and Herzegovina, HDZ BiH due to his pro-Bosnian politics, was shocked when Tudjman told him that Croatia would get the territory – even more than the Banovina had. “He knew nothing about Bosnia, or about the Croats in Bosnia. Karadjordjevo is the most tragic point in the history of the Bosnian Croats,” Kljuic told BIRN.

Croatian politician Josip Manolic testified at the ICTY that judging by Tudjman’s satisfaction, “most probably Milosevic was also satisfied with what they agreed, because together they continued to lead that policy, how to achieve that agreement in principle that they reached.”

The leader of the Serbs in Croatia and president of SAO Krajina, Milan Babic, was in Milosevic’s office at the end of March 1991 when the Serbian president drew a line on a map after saying “Tudjman needs [north-western Bosnian city] Bihac”. Milosevic then added that Tudjman needed a road between Benkovac and Drnis in Croatia too, which meant in the area where the Serbian autonomous region was located. Babic testified at the ICTY: “I was stunned because it meant everything, it meant quite the opposite to what he had been saying up until then.”

At a session of the Yugoslav presidency, a member of the Yugoslav Presidency from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bogic Bogicevic, asked Mesić what was agreed in Karadjordjevo. “I’m also interested in that,” added Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. Mesic said: “I told him that I don’t know what they agreed on, but I know what they sang. Izetbegovic asked, ‘And what did they sing?’ I answered: They sang: ‘You’re gone, Alija.’”

‘What if war does break out?’

Bosnian Serb military and political leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic in the town of Pale, August 1993. Photo:EPA-PHOTO/STRINGER.

Soon after he heard what was agreed in Karadjordjevo, Prime Minister Ante Markovic organised separate meetings with the two presidents. “Both of them confirmed to me that they had agreed to divide up Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Markovic testified at the ICTY.

He noted however that they did not have identical interpretations of Bosnia and its populace. Milosevic treated Bosnia as an artificial entity created by the Communists and believed that “most of the Muslims [Bosniaks] were, in fact, Orthodox”, while Tudjman claimed that Bosniaks were Catholics forced to accept Islam.

Markovic told them that could not implement their idea “without blood up to their knees”. To his question: “What if war does break out?”, Milosevic answered, “Well, then we’ll see what we’ll do”, while Tudjman said that Bosnia will fall without resistance “as did it upon the 16th century Ottoman conquest”.

On April 15, 1991, after Tudjman met Milosevic again, in Tikves in Croatia, which according to Sarinic was a more important meeting because maps began to be drawn up, Tudjman showed Sarinic “what Slobo [Milosevic]” gave him.

“I looked at this piece of paper. It was written in black ballpoint pen, and roughly it said the following, that the Muslims were a major evil,” Sarinic recalled. “I immediately returned this piece of paper to the president, and later on when we discussed it, he said, ‘Well, there’s something in it.’”

Soon afterwards, according to a transcript from a session of the Supreme State Council of Croatia, Tudjman expressed the opinion that it was possible to achieve the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina “because it is equally in the interest of Serbia and Croatia, while the Muslim component has no other way out but to accept this solution”.

After Karadjordjevo, Serbian and Croatian expert teams were established, according to the testimonies of their members. They met three times in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1991, and in a different composition in The Hague during the summer of that year.

“We did not at all discuss a division in the sense of delineating borders between Serbia and Croatia in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” testified Croatian team member Dusan Bilandzic. This however conflicted with his earlier statements, given to media, in which he described how “endless talks ensued on which side some small valley belonged to, whether it was Serb or Croat, who had the majority in the town”.

In the summer of 1991, the situation started becoming more serious. On Bosnian President Izetbegovic’s order, the Bosnian police minister brought to the Yugoslav prime minister tapes of intercepted conversations between Milosevic and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic.

“And from these, I recognised Milosevic’s voice and Karadzic’s voice. They were discussing the organisation of armies, the arrival of helicopters, the arrival of a colonel, the ‘RAM’ [‘Frame’] plan which I was not aware of,” testified Markovic.

Although the RAM plan was never produced in document form, in several cases before the ICTY it was referred to as the plan for the creation of a ‘Greater Serbia’, in which all Serbs in the former Yugoslav republics would live.

Milan Babic testified that he was in Milosevic’s office with Karadzic and Milosevic when Karadzic told him that he was waiting for Izetbegovic to make the wrong political move “and that is when accounts would be settled.”

In October 1991, when the Bosnian parliament adopted its Memorandum on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Sovereignty, a move towards independence from Yugoslavia, Karadzic announced from the parliamentary rostrum that violence was imminent. “Don’t think you won’t take Bosnia and Herzegovina to hell and Muslim people into possible extinction. Because Muslim people will not be able to defend themselves if it comes to war here,” Karadzic said.

Practical steps followed: the proclamation of the Serb-led Republika Srpska entity, with Karadzic as president, and the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia entity, with Mate Boban as president. During a conversation between Tudjman and his associates and one of the Bosnian Serb leaders, Nikola Koljevic, it was concluded that peaceful demarcation between Serbs and Croats in Bosnia could be achieved by relocating people.

In March 1992, Bosnian Serb leaders intensified the construction of the basic institutions of their newly-proclaimed Republika Srpska, after Izetbegovic, Karadzic and Boban, under the auspices of a representative of the then European Community, signed the Lisbon Agreement on the internal reorganisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina on an ethnic basis. Although Izetbegovic soon withdrew his signature, Karadzic said that day, March 18, 1992, was the day when the Bosnian Serbs won the battle for their own republic.

He pointed out that “if they had ignored us and remained silent, recognised Bosnia and said after that there are [Serb] rebels who are destroying their country, we would have been in serious trouble, nobody would talk to us”.

While the war was raging in Bosnia, in May 1992, Karadzic and Boban met in Graz in Austria. At a Republika Srpska parliamentary session, answering the question of what was agreed between them, Karadzic said that Serbs in Bosnia cannot believe in what was agreed with the Bosnian Croats, “partly because they are treacherous” and partly because “someone from Zagreb could change their decisions”. He explained however that the one of arrangements was the division of Bosnia into two parts.

In July 1993, Tudjman and Milosevic signed a statement in Geneva claiming that the only way to restore peace in Bosnia would be the establishment of three republics within the Bosnian confederation.

A proposal for the creation of a union of three republics was contained in UN mediators Thorvald Stoltenberg and David Owen’s July 1993 peace plan. It was discussed at the Bosniak Assembly (Bosnjacki sabor), which brought together Bosniaks from various political parties, in September 1993, a day before the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Assembly was due to make its decision about the peace plan.

Opening the Bosniak Assembly, Alija Isakovic described the proposed plan as coercion by the international community and by Bosnia’s neighbours. “Two aggressors are invited to decide the fate of the victim,” he said. Although Izetbegovic was inclined to accept the plan, the Bosniak Assembly and the Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina both rejected it.

Bosnia on the menu

After the collapse of the Owen-Stoltenberg peace plan, new proposals followed, but the idea of the partition of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia remained.

In May 1995, at a dinner at the Guildhall in the British capital, marking the 50th anniversary of the victory over fascism in World War II, diplomat and politician Paddy Ashdown set next to Tudjman. “I had asked President Tudjman if he would draw out for me what he believed to be the future shape of this area of ex-Yugoslavia,” Ashdown testified at the ICTY.

On the restaurant’s menu, the Croatian president drew a sketch representing Bosnia and in the middle of a sketch drew a line – on the left of the line was Greater Croatia; on the right, Greater Serbia.

“President Tudjman said that the Muslims had been incorporated into the territories of Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia, then Bosnia no longer existed,” testified Ashdown.

In the second half of 1995, the peace mediator Richard Holbrooke advised Tudjman not to meet with Milosevic. This advice was only partially accepted because instead Tudjman sent his adviser Sarinic to meet the Serbian president repeatedly.

Milosevic suggested that at the upcoming peace negotiations in Dayton, they should take the same line, and told Sarinic that the US was “cradling this bastard [Bosnia] without themselves knowing what they’re doing”.

Deputies in the Republika Srpska Assembly were disappointed with the signing of the Dayton Agreement to end the Bosnian war in July 1995 because the unification of Republika Srpska with Serbia did not happen. “Milosevic’s idea was like jumping over a precipice, either you shouldn’t have gone into it or you should have gone all the way,” Karadzic told them. But at the same time, he welcomed the fact that Serbs within Bosnia got their own entity, Republika Srpska.

Meanwhile, Tudjman told representatives of Herzeg-Bosnia: “Gentlemen, we’ve succeeded, we’ve succeeded in getting not just Herzeg-Bosnia, which is what we had. We’ve got – we can say this among ourselves – half of Bosnia if we are good in governing it if we govern cleverly.”

About half of the pre-war population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was displaced from their homes and tens of thousands were killed but although their most loyal associates ended up with long prison terms, neither Milosevic nor Tudjman were convicted of any crime.

Milosevic died before his trial verdict in The Hague and Tudjman was not even indicted before he died. And 30 years after Karadjordjevo, Bosnia still has not found internal peace.

This article is published as a part of the Enhancing Accountability and Memorialisation Processes in the Balkans project, financed by the Matra Regional Rule of Law Programme.