Continuación del procedimiento

As keeping the Yugoslav federal unity became unattainable, Lord Carrington asked Jose Cutileiro, a Portuguese diplomat, to hold talks with the three Bosnian communities. The Portuguese diplomat held several rounds of talks in Lisbon and Sarajevo with the leaders of the Bosnian political parties and on 23 February 1991, just six days before the independence referendum, an agreement, which would become known as the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan, was reached. But Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader, withdrew his signature when he came under heavy pressure from his community’s public opinion. In March, Cutileiro renewed his mediation and the parties agreed that Bosnia would be “a state composed of three constituent units, based on national principles

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and taking into account, economic, geographic and other criteria.”137 The statement did not specify what territorial adjustments would be made but set out substantial provisions for a power- sharing regime.138 This time the Bosnian Croats were the first to reject the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan. Touval (2002, 110) argues that the Bosnian Croats’ prime goal at the time was to maintain their alliance with the Muslims and the Muslims should be regarded as the main force behind the plan’s ultimate rejection. According to Burg and Shoup (1999, 112), the Croats were concerned about ethnic cantonisation provided by the plan, fearing that most Bosnian Croats, whose population was scattered, would become a national minority. The Muslims were also worried about the establishment of ethnically dominated cantons; they regarded the plan a step towards official partition of the country. Izetbegovic’s initial assent could be interpreted as appearing conciliatory in order to secure international recognition, but when he subsequently noticed that the US was unhappy with the plan, this prompted him to reject the blueprint.139

The plan was essentially undermined by the patchy international support, both within the EC and from the US. The US was pressing for Bosnia’s international recognition, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations; Bosnia would be recognised on 7 April without any agreement achieved between the Bosnian groups.140 Carrington and Cutileiro continued to push for an agreement on their plan and finally ended their efforts in June, when Izetbegovic refused to continue the talks unless the basis for negotiations changed.141 In other words, the first EC backed mediation process failed mainly due to fact that the impending recognition of Bosnia emboldened

137

Section A (1), “Statement of Principles for a New Constitutional Arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina”, http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/collections/owen/boda/ecco3.pdf (accessed 28/8/12). 138

The statement, for instance, stipulated that a chamber of constituent units would be formed where each group would have equal representation, which would enshrine the political equality between the three ethnic groups.

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Some US officials later disclosed that the US policy at the time was to encourage Izetbegovic to oppose the plan which the US deemed was an “ethnic partition plan”. The US officials also admitted that they promised Izetbegovic US support in the United Nations for recognition and pressed the Europeans to recognise Bosnian independence before a settlement. On 29 August 1993, David Binder of The New York

Times quoted a high-ranking State Department official saying that, "The policy was to encourage Izetbegovic

to break with the partition plan. … It was not committed to paper. We let it be known we would support his Government in the United Nations if they got into trouble.” Source: D. Binder (1993), “U.S. Policymakers on Bosnia Admit Errors in Opposing Partition in 1992”, The New York Times, 29 Aug.,

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/29/world/us-policymakers-on-bosnia-admit-errors-in-opposing- partition-in-1992.html (accessed 28/8/12).

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D. Binder (1993) reported that, “Mr. Baker [the US Secretary of State] "told the Europeans to stop pushing ethnic cantonization of Bosnia," and Richard Johnson, who was the Yugoslav desk officer at the State Department, claimed that "We [the US] pressed the Europeans to move forward on recognition." 141

UN Security Council (1992b), “Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant To Paragraph 15 of Security Council Resolution 757(1992) and Paragraph 10 of Security Council Resolution 758(1992) -(S/24100)”, 15 Jun., paragraph no. 5, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N92/252/36/PDF/N9225236.pdf

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the Muslims to demand a better deal and, with the recognition, the mediators lost the most effective diplomatic tool they had to convince the Muslims. On the battleground in Bosnia the plan’s provisions as well as the approaching independence encouraged all the fighting groups to try to acquire and ethnically cleanse more territory so that they could claim it for their territorial unit in the future (Burg and Shoup 1999, 117-120). The incoherent and uncoordinated state of the Western policy, or its lack thereof, did not help the mediators achieve their goal and instead rather worsened the armed conflict.

As the war deepened, the Bosnian Serbs acquired control over half of the Bosnian territory. The siege and bombardment of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb forces and the suffering this caused was shocking to the international public opinion.142 The need for a new diplomatic strategy was clear. The EC and the UN backed London conference took place in August 1992; its aim was to formulate the international community’s policy towards the Bosnian conflict and reinvigorate the peace talks. The agreed parameters for a solution to the conflict were put together in a public statement which was read out by the British Prime Minister John Major. The statement provided that a political settlement to the conflict must preserve Bosnia’s territorial integrity and independence, unless mutually agreed otherwise; and must include recognition of Bosnia by all the former Yugoslav republics.143 The conference also decided to turn into an ad hoc international body which would remain in being until a final political settlement reached to all the Yugoslav conflicts.