Z-4 Plan - Reactions From Belgrade (Serbia)

Reactions From Belgrade (Serbia)

The Krajina authorities refused to even consider the plan because it required reintegration with Croatia. Their official response, however, was that there would be a freeze on talks with Croatia until Croatia changed its attitude towards Krajina.

The authorities in Belgrade accepted the plan but only on the conditions that sanctions against Yugoslavia were to be lifted; however, despite this, Krajina authorities still refused to accept the plan. In Yugoslavia, only the Serbian Renewal Movement called for outright acceptance of the plan. Slobodan Milošević eventually stated that he agreed with the plan, but that it was up to the Krajina Serbs to accept or reject it. One reason Milošević said this was because Yugoslavia was planning at the time to diplomatically recognize Croatia, but this was unlikely to occur unless an agreement was reached between the Serbs in Krajina and the Croatian government. Milošević had some concerns about the plan because he believed that if Croatia accepted the plan in its initially unacceptable form, Yugoslavia may have been forced to accord the same status to Vojvodina, Kosovo and Sandžak.

In Belgrade, Vojislav Šešelj (founder of the nationalist far-right Serbian Radical Party) said that the self-proclaimed Serbian states in Croatia and Bosnia (the Republika Srpska) should declare a union between their two states. Other people called for Yugoslavia to recognize Krajina as being a state, just as Turkey did to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Albania had done with the Republic of Kosova from 1990-1999.