FRESH INDICTMENTS BRING TUDJMAN TO THE FORE FOR THE FIRST TIME - KAJIN

RIJEKA, March 9 (Hina) - The vice-president of the Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS) party and member of parliament, Damir Kajin, said on Tuesday that allegations in the indictments against generals Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak were graver than those in the indictment against fugitive general Ante Gotovina, because for the first time they brought to the fore the roles of the late president Franjo Tudjman and top government officials, namely wartime interior minister Ivan Jarnjak.#L# Speaking at a press conference in the northern Adriatic city of Rijeka, Kajin said that avoiding a parliamentary debate on the fresh indictments from the Hague tribunal suited "neither the government nor the opposition" and that such an attitude was "an escape from the attempt by Croatian citizens to face the truth." Kajin said that "Croatia had the right to integrate the so-called Krajina (Serb-occupied areas)" but that the integration had been followed by "the unwarranted burning of thousands of buildings" which he said could have been prevented by the government. Kajin also criticised the wartime government of "failure to prevent the killings of old people". Kajin said that all that had happened in order to prevent the Serb population from returning, and that the Serbs had left Croatia "under an agreement between Tudjman and Milosevic". "It is beyond dispute that Croatia was a victim of aggression and that hundreds of thousands of its citizens of Croatian ethnicity were expelled, but it is also beyond dispute that Croatia pursued a policy of aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was stopped by the Washington agreement," Kajin said. (Hina) vm sb