UNION OF THREE REPUBLICS. THE PEACE PLAN FOR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA IN 1993

This article scrutinizes the plan for ending the war in BosniaHerzegovina, which was in consideration from June to December of 1993. This peace plan was constructed by the United Nations and the European Union and its intermediaries, Thorvald Stoltenberg and David Owen. The search for a new peace plan came after the failure of the previous one (the so-called Vance-Owen plan), and the goal of the international community was to find a new solution that could end the war in Bosnia, which was becoming increasingly complicated due to the conflict between the Bosniaks and the Croats. The primary idea implied constructing three republics in Bosnia-Herzegovina, thus abandoning the multiethnic state concept. The emphasis was placed on analyzing the different points of view of the warring parties, including Serbia and Croatia, in order to examine if the plan had the capacity to stop the war and change the course of history of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The main problem was determining what part of the country each of the republics would occupy. The Serb Republic made the biggest compromise by agreeing to give up 20 percent of the area under its control. Parts of the plan were signed over the course of the negotiations from July to September of 1993. Although all three sides signed components of the agreements, the peace plan was rejected by the Bosnian Council in September of 1993. As negotiations continued, the European Union was directly involved through its foreign ministers, but the peace negotiations ended in failure on December 22, 1993.