OFFICE FOR COOPERATION WITH ICTY RECEIVES DOCUMENTS ON GOTOVINA

ZAGREB, June 12 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian government's office for cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY), Frane Krnic, confirmed on Thursday the office had received some documents from the President's Office regarding the "Gotovina case", intended for the U.N. tribunal. #L# Krnic could not provide any details about the documents, or say if they included any significant new documents, stating only that they were being studied. All documents intended for the tribunal must undergo a certain procedure and be de-classified, a job which requires a few days, he said. Krnic believes that the procedure could be completed by Wednesday, after which the documents would be forwarded to The Hague in line with the usual procedure. The documents are divided in two groups - one concerns the 1995 exodus of Serbs from the so-called Krajina and the other orders signed by General Ante Gotovina. Since September 2000 the government's office has forwarded to the ICTY a part of documents challenging the prosecution's theory that what happened in Krajina was ethnic cleansing, i.e. proving that the exodus of Serbs was organised by the rebel Serb authorities, Krnic said. Krnic believes the reason the President's Office is forwarding the documents now is of technical nature and assumes that competent services with the Office have obtained the documents or information about them only now. Krnic would neither deny nor confirm that the documents included evidence supporting claims that during Operation "Storm" Gotovina had been outside Croatia, namely in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He stressed that at the current stage of the case, Croatia, as a law- based state, would act in line with that fact and its international obligations. (hina) rml sb