On 25 March 1991, the presidents of the Yugoslav federal states SR Croatia and SR Serbia, Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević, met at the Karađorđevo hunting ground in northwest Serbia. The publicized topic of their discussion was the ongoing Yugoslav crisis. Three days later all the presidents of the six Yugoslav republics met in Split. Although news of the meeting taking place was widely publicized in the Yugoslav media at the time, the meeting was overshadowed by the crisis in progress, that would lead to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
In the following years, however, the meeting became substantially more controversial, as numerous Yugoslav politicians claimed that Tuđman and Milošević had discussed and agreed to the partitioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina along ethnic lines, such that territories with either a Croat or Serb majority would be annexed to the soon to be independent Croatia or Serbia respectively, with a rump Bosniak buffer state remaining in between.
Others have denied that any such agreement took place and since the Tuđman–Milošević talks took place with neither witnesses nor transcript, the exact content of the talks is not known. Historians have generally assessed it likely for the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina to have been the topic of discussion at the meeting, but that beyond broad strokes, no clear agreement would have been reached at this meeting.
Background
At the start of 1991, ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia, especially between the two largest ethnic groups, the Serbs and Croats, were worsening. At that time, many meetings between the leaders of all six Yugoslav republics took place. The first one was on 6 January 1991.
On 21 January, a meeting of delegations from SR BiH and SR Croatia, led by Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Tuđman, took place in Sarajevo. In the public report from the meeting, it was stated that both sides agreed that the crisis should be resolved peacefully and that outer and inner borders would be maintained. After the meeting Izetbegović said that there was an "absolute agreement of the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia about the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina", and that there are some different views about Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).
On 22 January, Izetbegović met with Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade. After the meeting, Alija Izetbegović said: "Today I am a bigger optimist than I was three days ago." He added that "he has an impression" that the Serbian side had some reservations about the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the event Yugoslavia broke up, but that it was not a problem if Yugoslavia survived.
On 23 January, Tuđman met the President of the SR Montenegro Momir Bulatović. In the public report the differences in their views were clear: Tuđman claimed that "borders between republics are borders of sovereign states", while Bulatović claimed that they are "administrative borders" which would become an issue in the case of the establishment of a confederation (Yugoslavia was a federation).
On 24 January, delegations from SR Slovenia and SR Serbia, led by Milan Kučan and Slobodan Milošević, met in Belgrade. Kučan and Milošević agreed that SR Slovenia could leave Yugoslavia and that Serbs have the right to live in the same country. The agreement was formalised on 14 August 1991, after Slovenia seceded.
On 25 January, a Croatian delegation, led by Tuđman, came to Belgrade. On the same day in Sarajevo, Izetbegović met Bulatović.
These meetings did not stop military tensions. On 25 January, the Federal Secretariat for National Defense (SSNO) directly accused Croatia of preparing paramilitary forces to attack the Yugoslav People's Army. The Army moved to its highest state of readiness. The SSNO accusations were perceived by some as a proclamation of war and a prelude to a military coup. The military leadership did not achieve support from a majority in the Yugoslav presidency and there was no military intervention.
During the Presidency of Yugoslavia meeting on 13 February, about giving Slovenia permission to leave, Tuđman said: "In such Yugoslavia - without Slovenia - Croatia will not remain. I think I have been clear enough."
On 23 February, Izetbegović said that there was essentially no more Yugoslavia, and that there will be a "triple level federation" instead: Slovenia and Croatia would be independent, Serbia and Montenegro would be in the core of the new state, and BiH and Macedonia would be in between, with BiH much closer to Serbia than to Croatia. Izetbegović was heavily attacked by public opinion, claiming that he had given BiH to Milošević.
In early March, the Pakrac clash saw a confrontation between Croat police and rebel Serb forces. On 9 March, the Yugoslav Army rushed to defend Milošević's government during the March 1991 protests in Belgrade.
From 12–16 March 1991, a joint meeting of the Presidency of SFRY, in its capacity as the high command of the armed forces, took place. At the meeting, the military leadership, led by Serbian officials, tried to introduce a state of emergency in the whole of Yugoslavia. Milošević stated that he no longer recognized the authority of the Presidency.
In this situation, all six leaders of the Yugoslav republics, Franjo Tuđman, Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović, Kiro Gligorov (SR Macedonia), Milan Kučan and Momir Bulatović organized a meeting in Split for 28 March 1991. A meeting was held between Tuđman and Milošević on 25 March in Karađorđevo, in preparation for the meeting in Split, as the leaders of the two biggest republics decided to try to agree on suggestions for resolving the crisis.
The meeting and public response
The meeting between Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević took place on the afternoon of 25 March 1991 in Karađorđevo near Bačka Palanka in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. At the time, the meeting did not seem to be different from any other meeting of republican leaders. The report of the meeting was in the public news the same and the days following. Foreign newspapers such as Le Monde, Le Figaro and Libération in France, also published short reports about the meeting, noting that "the two largest republics agreed to solve the difficult Yugoslav crisis in the next two months". According to the reports, the leaders discussed resolving the Yugoslav crisis and preparing for the upcoming meeting in Split with the rest of the leaders of the Yugoslav republics. As usual, in bilateral meetings, most of the discussion was held by Tuđman and Milošević alone, without other witnesses or a record kept. There was no official agreement of any kind.
Sarajevo newspaper Oslobođenje called the meeting "secret". From the beginning, there was speculation about what the two presidents discussed. The most common speculation was replacing the Prime minister of Yugoslavia Ante Marković. The first to speculate that the focus of the talks was Bosnia and Herzegovina, was an Oslobođenje journalist Miroslav Janković of Sarajevo on 14 April:
It is not necessarily to be very smart (...) to conclude that in the middle of that talks and tables was: Bosnia. The land across which passes every calculation and map of any future Yugoslavia.
Subsequent meetings Tuđman and Milošević met on another occasion, on 15 April in Tikveš in Baranja. The next day, all newspapers published the report of the meeting. After the meeting, expert groups from Croatia and Serbia discussed solving the Yugoslav crisis. Testimonies of the meetings by group members do not fully agree; but they all agree that there were no results.
On 12 June, in Split, Tuđman, Milošević and Izetbegović had a trilateral meeting. News of the meeting was public the next day, and no agreement was reached. Unlike the meeting in Karađorevo, this time immediate public speculation was that the trio had divided Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo newspaper Bosanski pogledi (Bosnian views) had a title the next day: "Tuđman, Milošević, Izetbegović, Tripartite Pact for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina". Izetbegović denied such speculations and said that it was "not possible to talk with him about that".
Aftermath
The most immediate significance of the meeting was not a deal over Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the absence of a deal over Croatia. Milošević made a speech one week after the Belgrade riots where he outlined plans which involved the incorporation of a large area of Croatia into the new Yugoslavia. In spite of the meetings, the Croatian War of Independence started on 31 March 1991 with the Plitvice Lakes incident, where a clash of Croat and Serb forces occurred.
Franjo Tuđman and the Croatian government have denied, on numerous occasions, that there was an agreement at Karađorđevo. Tudman stated, in his October 1991 speech, that the Serbs controlled all of the Yugoslav Army and the Serb rebellion in Croatia, during the Croatian war of independence, was just the beginning. Croatia declared independence on 8 October 1991. By the end of the year, nearly one-third of Croatia was occupied by Serbian forces. Most countries recognized the independent Croatia on 15 January 1992.
At a meeting with a Bosnian Croat delegation on December 27, 1991, Tuđman announced that conditions allowed for an agreement to redraw the boundaries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it was not yet independent, and peace plans at the time envision it as a "three nations" country.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first fights started on 1 October 1991, when the Yugoslav People's Army, controlled by Serbs, attacked the Croat-populated village of Ravno in Herzegovina. Alija Izetbegović considered that as part of the war in Croatia, and ignored it, saying that "it is not our war". Bosnian government, over objections of Serb members, held a referendum on independence on 29 February and 1 March. Although participation in referendum didn't reach constitutionally-required 66% of eligible voters, two days later, on 3 March 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence. In the following days, many countries, including Croatia, recognized the independence of BiH. The Bosnian War soon spread out and would last until November 1995.
The Graz agreement was a proposed truce between Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban on April 27, 1992, signed in the town of Graz, Austria. At this point, Serb forces controlled 70 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The treaty was meant to limit conflict between the Serb and the Croat forces. Bosnian Muslims saw this as a sequel to the Croat-Serb deal about Bosnia. In between the newly expanded Croatia and Serbia would be a small Bosniak buffer state, pejoratively called "Alija's Pashaluk" by Croatian and Serbian leadership, and named after Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović. The ICTY judgement in the Blaškić case suggests a reported agreement at the Graz meeting between Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat leaders.
By the end of 1992, the Serbs controlled two thirds of the country. Although allies at the beginning, Croats and Muslims (Bosniaks) fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina from October 1992 until February 1994. After signing the Washington Agreement they ended the war again as allies. The internal structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina was discussed and was finally decided with the Dayton Agreement. Some internal divisions remained, most notably the Republika Srpska.
Claims of impact
At the time, the meeting in Karađorđevo did not appear different from previous meetings of the leaders of the Yugoslav republics. However, in future years, this meeting, and sometimes the later meeting of Tuđman and Milošević in Tikveš, became famous because of claims that the participants had discussed and agreed upon a partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Political scientist Kristen P. Williams noted in 2001 how the Bosnian leadership at the time viewed the meeting as part of a collusion between Milošević and Tuđman to destroy Bosnia.