Following a struggle within the unitary Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Croat leaders won autonomy for a new ethnic-based banovina with the Cvetković-Maček Agreement.

Zubak, who has been the Croat leader since January when he replaced the extreme nationalist Mate Boban, is untainted by charges of ethnic cleansing against Moslems.

Those demands alone, Western diplomats say, could scuttle the joint federal institutions, especially given the hostility between Muslim and ethnic Serb and Croat leaders.

He is also known to have attended a Croatian diet in Cetin in late 1526 along with several other important Croat leaders of the time.

Bosnian Croat leaders have said they will never fully cooperate with a national Government if the Muslim party controls the state security apparatus.

Bosnian Muslim, Serb, and Croat leaders stole $1 billion in public funds and international aid.

The first problem was that the Croat leader of the Temple, Rotislav Chaloupek, was already dead, killed in Zdar.

After the massacre, Croat leaders, supported by propaganda efforts, tried to deny the massacre or to blame other sides in the Bosnian War.

Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Srpska constantly talks of dissolving the state and Bosnian Croat leaders complain of being marginalised.

The Croat leader, Mate Boban, in turn said the Muslims could buy land in Neum and build their own port.