which he held for nearly 20 years. His political ascendance began with economic revitalization of the Bosanska Krajina region, than impoverished region of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. Pozderac provided the political backing to Agrokomerc, at the time small local food manufacturer which would later become one of the largest food manufacturing corporations in the former Yugoslavia. Agrokomerc proved to be the key to the economic prosperity of the region. While his primary goal was economic reform of then impoverished SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he relatively successfully implemented, Pozderac also played an important role in confronting nationalists from Serbia through a series of controversial and risky political moves. The reason he is today considered one of the most important Bosnian politicians is his significant role in constitutional amendments in the 1970s which recognized Bosnian Muslims as one of the constituent ethnic groups of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina and SFR Yugoslavia. Although his political orientation was left of center, and while he continually confronted nationalist politics of ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia, Pozderac inevitably contributed to the establishment of the process that led to the emergence of the modern Bosniak nation. A series of political attacks were reportedly staged against Pozderac by the Serbian lobby in Bosnia who tried to discredit and remove him from the political scene. One attempt was made by Vojislav Šešelj in the early 1980s, who learned that one of the students of Pozderac at the University of Sarajevo plagiarized portions of his dissertation, but was not punished for by Pozderac. Because the student Brano Miljuš was a high-ranking individual within the Communist party, controversy ensued but Šešelj's efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. Sarajevo process The most controversial process however was the so-called "Sarajevo process" in 1983. The Sarajevo process centered on convicting Alija Izetbegović for having written the Islamic Declaration. Pozderac reaffirmed his political opposition to Serbian nationalism and in particular to the politics of Slobodan Milošević, who was allegedly seeking to revert the constitutional amendments of the 1970s that awarded the Muslims the status of a constituent ethnicity. The "Sarajevo process" backfired as the Serbian lobby insisted that Bosnia was a "dark vilayet" where all those who oppose the government will be prosecuted and where Bosnian Muslim communists were prosecuting Muslim believers. Others interpreted the "Sarajevo process" as Pozderac's way of removing political amateurs who could end up disrupting the process of Bosnian independence. Izetbegović would