On 12 March 1991, the leadership of the Army met with the Presidency of the SFRY in an attempt to convince them to declare a state of emergency which would allow for the army to take control of the country.
On 25 March, Franjo Tuđman and Serbian President Slobodan Milošević held a meeting in Karađorđevo. The meeting became controversial in later months due to claims by some Yugoslav politicians that the two presidents agreed to the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to testimony by Krajina's former President Milan Babić, Milošević had abandoned plans of having "all Serbs in one state" by March 1991 in the secret Karađorđevo agreement with Croatian President Franjo Tuđman that discussed the partition of Bosnia.
The Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia, also referred to as Badinter Arbitration Committee, was set up by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community (EEC) on August 27, 1991, to provide the Conference on Yugoslavia with legal advice.
On December 19, as the intensity of the fighting increased, Croatia won its first diplomatic recognition by a western nation—Iceland—while the Serbian Autonomous Oblasts in Krajina and western Slavonia officially declared themselves the Republic of Serbian Krajina.