HIP SLAMS GOV'T FOR CONSENTING TO HAGUE TRIBUNAL'S POLICY

ZAGREB, May 18 (Hina) - The Croatian True Revival (HIP) Party released a statement for the media on Sunday criticising the authorities because of their failure to react to indictments from the Hague war crimes tribunal and consenting to the tribunal's equation of victim and aggressor. #L# HIP says "the incumbent authorities do not intend to defend Croatian generals, the Homeland War, and all those who created the Croatian state from politically fabricated indictments". According to the party, this is evidenced by the failure to react to the equation of Croatian general Ante Gotovina and Bosnian Serb war-time leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the recent offer of a reward for information as to Gotovina's whereabouts, and assertions that the government would arrest him immediately if it knew where he was. HIP claims the above indicates the authorities have renounced the view Prime Minister Ivica Racan expressed to chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte in a 2001 letter as to unacceptable definitions in the indictment against Gotovina. The party also says Del Ponte's claim that there will be no justice as long as Mladic, Karadzic, and Gotovina are at large is another proof that the U.N. tribunal's prosecution does not care about truth and justice and equates the victim and the aggressor. HIP is particularly embittered by the fact that the government is "consenting to the policy of the Hague prosecutor's office and the equating of the victim and the aggressor". The aim of this policy is to punish Croats for using the legal right to self-defence and turn the Homeland War into a crime, says HIP. (hina) ha