CROATIAN SERB OFFICIAL URGES REALISATION OF MINORITY RIGHTS

ZAGREB, May 29 (Hina) - The president of the Serb People's Council (SNV), Milorad Pupovac, urged the Croatian government on Thursday to call the founding sessions of minority councils and see that they start operating, so that minorities could start exercising their rights as soon as possible. #L# He reiterated that the Serb minority had met conditions to constitute councils in 11 counties, in which some 79% of the Croatian Serb population live. Pupovac also called on the government to organise additional elections in municipalities, towns and counties in which "the representation of minorities is not proportional to their share in the population". The government should have organised the additional elections immediately after the announcement of census results, but this was not done, he said. Speaking about the tenancy rights of Serbs who during the war lost those rights on different bases, Pupovac said that some government members, too, were responsible for the failure to solve that problem. He recalled that solving the issue of tenancy rights was also regulated by the agreement on succession to the former Yugoslav federation, which binds all successor-states to recognise the tenancy rights of all persons who had those rights but were not able to exercise them in conditions of war. Foreign Minister Tonino Picula was among those who signed the agreement in 2001, but the parliament has not ratified it, although chances that it will be changed are slim, Pupovac said. He said that the SNV would initiate proceedings to establish the constitutionality of the law on the election of parliamentary deputies because it was dissatisfied with the way it regulated minority rights. (hina) rml sb