CROAT PRIEST FROM SERBIA SAYS KNEW HIS PHONE WAS BUGGED IN 1990'S

NOVI SAD, May 3 (Hina) - Marko Kljajic, a parish priest who chronicled the expulsion of Croats from the Srijem region in northern Serbia, has said he was not surprised by claims made recently at the Hague war crimes tribunal by a protected witness to the effect that Kljajic was under surveillance in the early 1990s. #L# Kljajic's name was mentioned in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The priest of the St. Rok parish in Petrovaradin, Kljajic wrote "How My People Was Dying", a book with the names of some 30,000 Catholics expelled from Srijem a decade ago. Speaking to Belgrade's Beta news agency on Saturday, Kljajic said he had been aware of being tailed and of his telephones being bugged, but that he had not been scared because he had nothing to hide. Kljajic's book has already been used in Milosevic's trial, but Kljajic ruled out the possibility of appearing in The Hague, either as witness or chronicler, saying he did not see how it might help the truth about his people. He said he assumed who C-48, the protected witness who mentioned him, might be. Kljajic said he would not ask police to remove wire-tapping devices from his parish office. He said wire-tapping was typical of dictatorships and that if anyone was still interested in what was being said and who was coming to his office could listen in. Kljajic recalled that his 70-year-old mother was beaten in 1993 and that Miroslav Alimpic, the investigating judge of the Novi Sad district court, inexplicably stopped proceedings against those responsible. Kljajic said the "state's terror" over local Croats in Srijem stopped with the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in late 1995. According to Kljajic, some 30,000 Catholics, mainly Croats but also Hungarians and Slovaks, as well as people from mixed marriages, were expelled from Srijem in the 1990s. He says the situation was the worst in Kukujevci, Slankamen, Hrtkovci, and Novi Banovac. (hina) ha