Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia
On 20 November 1991 Lord Carrington asked: "Can the internal boundaries between Croatia and Serbia and between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia be regarded as frontiers in terms of public international law?" Applying the principle of "uti possidetis juris", the commission concluded on 11 January 1992, "The boundaries between Croatia and Serbia, between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and possibly other adjacent independent states may not be altered except by agreement freely arrived at... Except where otherwise agreed, the former boundaries become frontiers protected by international law".
1991 protest in Split
In 1990, following the electoral defeat of the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, ethnic tensions worsened. The Yugoslav People's Army ("Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija" – JNA) then confiscated the weapons of Croatia's Territorial Defence ("Teritorijalna obrana") in order to minimize resistance. On 17 August, tensions escalated into an open revolt of the Croatian Serbs, centred on the predominantly Serb-populated areas of the Dalmatian hinterland around Knin, parts of the Lika, Kordun, Banovina and eastern Croatia. After two unsuccessful attempts by Serbia, supported by Montenegro and Serbia's provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo to obtain the Yugoslav Presidency's approval to deploy the JNA to disarm Croatian security forces in January 1991, and a bloodless skirmish between Serb insurgents and Croatian special police in March, the JNA itself, supported by Serbia and its allies, asked the federal Presidency to grant it wartime powers and declare a state of emergency. The request was denied on 15 March, and the JNA came under the control of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Milošević, preferring a campaign to expand Serbia rather than the preservation of Yugoslavia, publicly threatened to replace the JNA with a Serbian army and declared that he no longer recognized the authority of the federal Presidency. The threat caused the JNA to gradually abandon plans to preserve Yugoslavia in favour of expanding Serbia. By the end of the month, the conflict had escalated to its first fatalities. The JNA intervened on the side of the insurgents, and prevented the Croatian police from taking action. In early April, the leaders of the Serb revolt in Croatia declared their intent to integrate the area under their control, viewed by the Government of Croatia as a breakaway region, with Serbia.