Sarajevo weekly 'Svijet' presented in its issue of December 7, 1997, an overview of the political situation created by the critical statement of the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic against the independent media in Sarajevo.

The speech of the President of the BiH Presidency and the president of the SDA party at the Seminar held by the Council of the Congress of Bosnian Intelectuals, which had as its theme 'War and Peace', was, and still is a top theme for the domestic, and it also seems, foreign media. On that occasion, Izetbegovic 'opened his soul', and again, explained to Bosnian intellectuals that, even though it was put on medication, Yugoslavia died anyway, and that there was no other way out for Bosnia and Herzegovina except the war path, stressing one more time how the SDA party protected Bosnia...

In the greater part of his speech, Izetbegovic spelled out a series of accusations at the expense of domestic, as he said, magazines 'who are rushing to present dark sides in this society, particularly when the crimes are in question, they are stressing this...'. Negating the number of three thousand killed Serbs in Sarajevo during the war, Izetbegovic admitted that 'some hundred of them were killed'. Saying that crime is still a crime, Izetbegovic stressed that 'the manner in which this is treated today by the media is not exactly acceptable, it is not patriotic'.

'I want to say that nobody, I state that responsibly, told us that there are crimes', said Alija Izetbegovic, and than further on, accused those that, as he said, 'they call independent magazines' for a campaign against Bosnian state, qualifying them as unprofessional and bought by some foreign organizations.