LONDON, July 7 -- A map of the Balkans drawn by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman during a V-E Day banquet this year raised concern Monday that he may have made a deal to split the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia. Tudjman drew the map on a banquet menu after Paddy Ashdown, the head of the British Liberal Democrat Party, asked the Croatian leader what he believed the former Yugoslavia would look like in 10 years time. The Times newspaper obtained a copy of the banquet menu map and published it Monday. Ashdown confirmed the report and said the map was evidence of a Serb- Croat deal to eventually obliterate Bosnia. 'It (Bosnia) would be a Serb federation and a Croat federation,' Ashdown told Independent Television News. 'President Tudjman also mentioned to me...that he would retake... Knin (in) Krajina, he'd do it in about August or September and be able to do it in about eight days. They've done it in much less than that,' Ashdown said. The Croatian army began an offensive last Friday against the Serb Krajina enclave in Croatia, causing thousands of Serb refugees to flee to neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. Tudjman's impromptu sketch, drawn in May at a banquet attended by the queen, showed an S-shaped border from the Sava River in northern Bosnia, through Sarajevo and to the Adriatic. Eastern Slavonia remained on the Serbian side of the border, and the Muslim town of Tuzla appeared to be in the Greater Serbia.
Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb capital, and Sarajevo, the Bosnian Muslim capital, were shown as part of the Croatian federation. The Times expressed concern that the map indicated Tudjman may have made a deal with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to divide Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia. The Times quoted Tudjman as speaking admiringly of Milosevic, saying, 'He is more intelligent, sticks to his word, and anyway, he is one of us.' It said he dismissed Bosnian President Alijia Izetbegovic as 'an Algerian and a fundamentalist.' Speaking to ITN, Ashdown appealed for the international community to warn Tudjman against taking any military steps toward Bosnia- Herzegovina. 'The international community must now make it absolutely clear to President Tudjman, now he's got the military momentum behind...(him), that recapturing Knin Krajina is one thing, stepping over Bosnia- Herzegovina and dividing that territory between himself and President Milosevic would quite another and totally intolerable.'
