"NO" TO THE AGREEMENT CONCERNING THE PORT OF PLOCE

AIM Zagreb, 16 October, 1997

When in the beginning od 1994, the Washington agreement was signed, or more precisely its Annex 7, at the dawn of hope in Croat-Bosniac peace, its contents caught attention at the time only of inhabitants of Ploce, the Neretva river valley and part of the coast around Makarska. The agreement according to which Croatia should have rented the port of Ploce to B&H Federation for the period of 99 years, caused a turmoil in the city. Management of the port of Ploce, city authorities, trade unions and inhabitants raised their voices in protest fearing that this arrangement would deprive them of the port (read: jobs) and that arrival of workers from B&H would change the demographic picture of the region. There were attempts later to mitigate the affair with big words such as Croatian sovereignty, but the contents remained the same: the port must belong to the citizens of Ploce! Even Croatian foreign minister Dr Mate Granic was forced to come on a specific diplomatic mission to the south of Croatia to reassure the population there.

    He explained to them that free access of B&H to the

sea in the port of Ploce was a strategic interest of Croatia, because it was one of the ways to link the Federation to Croatia, but that it was primarily of economic interest of Ploce, adding that the Federation will only have the right to load, unload and store commodities in the port. Granic stressed at the time that in the final version of the contract Croatia would not give in concerning the following three items: the question of Croatian sovereignty, preservation of the existing demographic picture and protection of the domestic workers.

Therefore, peace in Ploce - where an interim agreement on the use of the port was in force - lasted until the meeting of Tudjman and Izetbegovic in the beginning of August held in Split. Since Ploce were also on the agenda of that meeting, that city authorities hurried to declare once again their stand: there could be no bargaining with the port of Ploce. In Villa Dalmatia, at a semi-dictated press conference, the first question was what had been agreed about the port of Ploce. Alija Izetbegovic referred to Washington agreement replying that this question was regulated by it, and Franjo Tudjman began his reply with the statement: There is nothing to add to it...

On that same day, American peace mediators Richard Holbrooke and Robert Gelbard specified the obligations of the Croatian and the B&H party - to draw up a contract on the use of the port of Ploce by the end of September. This contract had supervision - of American experts. Pursuant the Washington agreement, the Americans anticipated a free zone in the port for Bosnia & Herzegovina, reducing the time for that concession to 30 years. B&H agreed, but Croatia rejected it...

Everybody is aware that Ploce will be one of the key links in reconstruction of B&H. And that not only Bosnia & Herzegovina needs assurances that it will be possible for it to use Ploce for a long period, but as American expert Louis Sell says, this is also necessary for international investors in increasing the capacity of the port of Ploce. On the other hand, in Croatia and Ploce itself, there is a clear awareness that without B&H there would not have been the port of Ploce in the first place, nor will there be. But, it is believed that renting a part of territory is a model not practised in the world any more and that the cooperation can be founded on economic bases. This strongest argument is stressed by the manager of the port of Ploce Ivica Pavlovic who often repeats that the port had worked for B&H even at the height of the Croat-Bosniac conflict. When speaking of the political aspect, there is also the argument that renting a part of Croatian territory to another state is contrary to its Constitution.

The port workers in Ploce say this quite explicitly: the signature on the contract on renting the port will be considered as high treason! They are still not demanding from the signatories of the Washington agreement to assume responsibility for it. Minister of the economy Nenad Porges speaks about changed conditions in relation to the time when the Washington agreement was signed, and the manager of the port Ivica Pavlovic mentions that the annex concerning Ploce was just a component of the confederation contract. "And as far as we know, nothing will come out of the idea on confederation", says Pavlovic.

"In a longterm, we must not permit petroleum dollars, or rather Arabic dollars, by their penetration, their aggressiveness, to make us in 10 or 20 years to put forward the question who this region belongs to politically. We are in favour of a business model which will bring well-being to this region, but not well-being at any cost. That is why we request from our negotiators and experts to find a possibility which would without renting for 99 years satisfy commercial interests of B&H and which would firmly and for a longer period of time guarantee B&H access to the Adriatic Sea and undisturbed use of the port of Ploce", the mayor of Ploce Josko Damic used to say.

In Ploce, they are still firm about it, and the Croatian leadership is increasingly in favour of this approach, especially because there are models in international law for resolving the access to the sea to states which do not have it without concessions to territory.

"Our proposal is to make it a zone which would be jointly managed and which would meet the needs of both Croatian and B&H economy, but also third countries whose loads would pass through the port of Ploce", vice prime minister Ljerka Mintas-Hodak declared after the last Zagreb meeting of the expert group.

Soon in Sarajevo, Croatian and B&H negotiators will meet, under American surveillance once again. A look into the past would not do them any harm, on the contrary. The past shows that B&H export and import accounted for three quarters of the prewar traffic in the port of Ploce of more than 4.5 million tons. One third of the total traffic in Bosnia & Herzegovina was carried out through the port of Ploce, and Ploce had been the second largest Croatian port which lagged behind Rijeka by only one fifth of the traffic. During the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in the peacetime period, the traffic in Ploce dropped down to only 5 to 6 per cent of the prewar traffic.

On the other hand, after the lesson of the near past, the latest war, it is difficult to convince anyone in Ploce and not only there, that a part of Croatian territory could be given to anyone. Especially because here, as people in Ploce think, not only the territory is at stake, but survival. In Ploce, but also in the Croatian public, there is general agreement about it, as well as about the fact that the port has always worked for Bosnia & Herzegovina and that it will continue to do so in the future.

GORAN VEZIC