CROATIAN GOVT. WILL FOLLOW SERBIAN TRIAL FOR OVCARA WAR CRIME - MINISTER

NOVI SAD, Feb 21 (Hina) - Croatian Justice Minister Vesna Skare-Ozbolt has said the government attaches great importance to the processing of war crimes in Serbia, and that a representative of the Croatian embassy in Belgrade will follow the trial for the 1991 massacre at eastern Croatia's Ovcara farm.#L# In an interview with the Novi Sad-based Gradjanski list daily, which Belgrade's news agencies carried on Saturday, the minister welcomed the efforts the Serbian judiciary was making to prosecute war crimes committed in Croatia. She said the trial of the accused for the Ovcara war crime would arouse great interest in Croatia. The suspects in that crime have been connected to paramilitary troops active in the Vukovar area during the 1990s war in Croatia. The Prosecutor's Office in the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague estimates that at least 198 people were killed at Ovcara on 20 November 1991 after the fall of nearby Vukovar. Skare-Ozbolt said in the interview the Croatian government had asked on a number of occasions that all persons against whom there was relevant evidence that they had committed war crimes be prosecuted. She said that since the Serbian Constitution does not allow the extradition of Serbia-Montenegro citizens, she expected that all war criminals would be put on fair trials either before Serbia's special court for war crimes or before the Hague tribunal. The minister advocated a more open cooperation of all institutions in the region's countries in the punishment of war crimes. "It's the only way to show the international community as well as ourselves that we are capable of punishing every crime." Skare-Ozbolt said Croatia was processing the Serbian Justice Ministry's request to question witnesses in the Ovcara case. (Hina) ha