Franjo Tudjman Quotes

He was driven by the idea that when Milosevic grabs a part of Bosnia, Croatia should get a piece of it, too.

I believe that ultimately the situation in Kosovo can only be resolved through self-determination.

Serbs can only leave Kosovo.

We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia.

The reason there IS a Turkey and there ISN'T a Kurdistan is in all of history no Kurd could ever stand by any other Kurd long enough to hold off all the hungry Arabs, Persians, Turks, Brits and other sand carnivores swimming around the Fertile Crescent.

Live and let live has never been a Balkan rule…. Following five centuries of subjugation the Balkan peoples have had only half a century of freedom for experiment in nationhood,--a half-century, too, which has been distracted by the plots and counter-plots of foreign statesmen.

At a certain moment, Yugoslavia stopped being rational, and then you end up going to war.

The reason that the Croats want a state of their own is that they fear being cut into little pieces by the Serbs.

You can't ignore reality. You won't wake up one morning and find that the Arabs of Umm al-Faham have become part of Palestine and are no longer in Israel.

For 10 years, Kosovo was taboo. No one could officially tell the truth.

The Chechnya problem is a centuries-old problem. The thing is that today, fundamentalists and terrorists are exploiting those centuries-old problems to accomplish their own objectives that have nothing to do whatsoever with the interests of Chechnya.

I think no one could have made peace in Bosnia besides Holbrooke.

The Kosovars were granted autonomy at the end of World War II, but then aspiring president Milosevic had the autonomy revoked in 1989, and the Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the recent war in Bosnia and Croatia, failed to address the issue of Kosovo's status.

A final and long-lasting solution to the Kosovo issue cannot be achieved without an agreement with Serbia, especially in regard to the U.N.

Had someone from Serbia flown a 'Greater Serbia' flag in Tirana or Pristina, it would become an issue for the U.N. Security Council.

You should give no indication that we wish the three-way division of Bosnia.

Borders most often result from wars or peace treaties that end wars.

Borders cannot be redrawn in blood.

Historically, the Middle East was governed by Empires. The empires drew the lines between nations without paying attention to the ethnicity of the peoples in the nations. Now, you don’t have a single country that is cohesive in the Middle East. For that reason, you see civil wars all over the place.

Attempts by one ethnic group to exercise sovereignty over another are not fair. It doesn't matter if that ethnicity is Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Chaldean or whatever.

I would sacrifice peace in order to win sovereignty for Bosnia, but for that peace in Bosnia, I would not sacrifice sovereignty.

The U.S. actions in Kosovo - carving out an independent state based on ethnicity from within a sovereign nation - provided the precedent for Russia to carve Crimea out of Ukraine.

Our fundamental goal in getting involved in Bosnia in the summer of 1995 was to end the war. Richard Holbrooke's fundamental goal was to negotiate a peace: a peace that was sustaining and self-sustaining over the long term.

In my opinion, Israel has the right to its security in as much as the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation. Israel has the power in this perpetual stalemate, as it also has the power to break it and begin a meaningful peace process.

Around us in the Middle East there is total chaos. I'm not willing to give up on my land for this chaos.