The conference was attended by officials from Zadar County and its towns and municipalities, as well as from various institutions.
The meeting discussed the government's commitments regarding the national refugee return policy, particularly in the formerly war-affected areas in Zadar County.
OSCE Mission chief Jorge Fuentes said the reason for holding the meeting in Zadar was the fact that incidents involving returnees were occurring in the Zadar hinterland.
Fuentes said that what was being said about refugee return on the state level was often encountering obstacles on the local level, where he said decisions and programmes were not being implemented.
The ambassador recalled his recent meeting with PM Ivo Sanader, who had informed him that the Croatian government had already started implementing a programme to provide housing for former tenancy right holders and that it would buy or build 400 flats for returnees by the end of the year. This plan is part of a recently adopted government programme on the construction and purchase of some 4,000 apartments for returnees who used to have tenancy rights.
A state secretary at the Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development, Damir Spancic, spoke about the government's programmes aimed at revitalising the formerly war-affected areas. The government has provided clear and transparent return and housing accommodation projects unlike neighbouring countries, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where it is not evident how much is being invested in such programmes, Spancic said.
Last year alone, the Croatian government spent 2.3 billion kuna for return, reconstruction and infrastructure programmes in the formerly war-stricken areas, and this year it will spend 2.1 billion.
The problem with those areas is low employment and areas infested with mines. The government's goal is to launch family farm projects to enable employment and development, Spancic said.
He added that the process was very complex, but that Zadar County was a good example of how infrastructure in those areas was being reconstructed.
Refugee return is a priority for this government, Spancic said, adding that the government planned to create conditions for the return of all citizens by the end of 2006 now that the reconstruction of houses has been almost entirely completed. We want to close that issue, he said.
Spancic recalled that since the end of the war Croatia had reconstructed 138,000 houses, which cost more than 15 billion kuna.
Speaking to reporters after the conference, Fuentes said that the purpose of the meeting was for representatives of the central government to inform local authorities that the government's position was that all problems in refugee return in the Zadar hinterland had to be solved.
Nobody will be able to say any more that they do not know their obligations in the implementation of government policy, Fuentes told reporters after the meeting, underlining that all outstanding problems must be solved.
Fuentes said that local authorities were not obstructing the government's policy of refugee return, but that rather communication between central and local authorities was poor.
Asked to comment on a recent statement by Croatian Serb leader Milorad Pupovac that the situation with refugee returns in the Zadar hinterland was like the situation in Kosovo, Fuentes said that the statement was exaggerated.