ZAGREB, May 30 (Hina) - Commenting on the issue of the restitution of property and compensation for the lost tenancy rights, which the international community treats as being a key condition for the return of ethnic Serb refugees,
Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Groan Granic, has said he is expecting the adoption of relevant regulations for the problem in the coming months.
ZAGREB, May 30 (Hina) - Commenting on the issue of the restitution
of property and compensation for the lost tenancy rights, which the
international community treats as being a key condition for the
return of ethnic Serb refugees, Croatian Deputy Prime Minister
Groan Granic, has said he is expecting the adoption of relevant
regulations for the problem in the coming months. #L#
Granic was quoted by the Croatian Television's news programme on
late Thursday night as saying that this would not be the restoration
of tenancy rights, an institute erased from the Croatian legal
system many years ago, but the matter referred to the problem of
refugees, Croatian citizens of the Serb ethnic descent.
He put them into three legal categories, namely those who had had
houses which were destroyed in the war but the houses were being now
reconstructed within reconstruction programmes, those who had
houses which were currently being occupied by Croats expelled from
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and those who had had tenancy rights but they
had nowhere to come back.
According to the deputy prime minister, Croatia has drawn up a
programme which envisages that everybody who is a Croatian national
and would like to return, will be given a possibility to lease a flat
or buy a flat within the programme of the state's co-financing of
the flat construction (the so-called POS programme).
In the case when a citizen rents a flat, this will be covered by the
social compensation for the lease, such as one existing for all
categories of people in that status, while in the POS programme,
those who opt for it, will be given a long term loans with favourable
interest rates, as all other Croatian citizens, Granic explained.
He expects that Zagreb will receive the full support of the
international community to those solutions.
Granic was quoted as saying that "nobody can live in somebody else's
home, everybody has the right to their property, and not any
national of the Republic of Croatia will be left unprovided-for".
Responding to a question of the television programme anchor man's
about figures of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-
operation in Europe) which assessed that 24,000 persons lost their
tenancy rights, and of the Croatian Helsinki Committee which put
the number at 10,000, the government's official said "the real
figure will be established only after requests (for the return) be
submitted".
He stressed that the rights to the social lease would be allowed
only to persons who had no property in Croatia or in other
countries-successors to the former Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia (SFRY), and who wanted to come back to Croatia.
Concerning speculations about the number of ethnic Serbs who had
fled Croatia and would like to return now, Granic said the
government had a data about 16,000 potential returnees of this
kind.
It is important that Croatian nationals of the Serb ethnic
background can return and that there are no barriers in the return
process, Granic said.
(hina) ms