The Croat Catholic Archbishop of Sarajevo, Cardinal Vinko Puljic, said in an interview with Dnevni Avaz daily of Sunday that regardless of the fact that the war was over, Catholic Croats in the country were still exposed to ethnic cleansing, and that ethnic communities that were bigger than the Croat community were electing to the government Croat representatives who were not supported by the majority of the Croat electorate.
"Ethnic cleansing, which we strongly condemned during the war, is now being carried out in a perfidious way. Maybe that is what the global power-wielders want so that the issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina could be settled without us (Catholic Croats)," Puljic told the Sarajevo-based daily.
He added that the bigger ethnic groups in the country as well as the international community should make steps to prevent the emigration of the local Croat population, noting that the Holy See was worried about the position of Bosnia's Croat community.
Cardinal Puljic also commented on the newly established government of the Croat-Bosniak entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is made up of the Social Democratic Party, the Party of Democratic Action, and two Croat parties - the Croatian Party of Rights and the Progress Through Work Party.
He said that it was a government formed by "the most numerous community in the country, and not one established according to the votes of the electorate."
Puljic added that Bosniak politicians and the Bosniak people had the responsibility to prevent Croats' being outvoted, a fact which he said had led to the forging of an alliance between the smaller Croat and Serb communities.
