CONFERENCE ON ORGANISED CRIME OPENS IN ISTRIA

VALBANDON/PULA, Sept 22 (Hina) - A conference on technical assistance in the legal application of the UN convention on the fight against organised transnational crime, its protocols and universal international legal instruments in combating terrorism, opened in the town of Valbandon near Pula in Istria on Monday. #L# The meeting, organised by the UN office for the fight against drugs and crime in cooperation with the Council of Europe, has brought together about 30 Croatian judges, state attorneys and Justice Ministry officials. Jean Paul Labourde of the Vienna-based UN department for the prevention of terrorism told a press conference that it was necessary to establish uniform legal frameworks in European countries to combat terrorism and organised crime. In this context, he said that the Croatian legal system was very similar to that of the European Union. In the next two days, the Croatian representatives will present how the implementation of the UN convention has proved in practice and what else is necessary for Croatia to deal with this problem more efficiently in cooperation with other countries, Labourde said. He added that the meeting was expected to define mechanisms and instruments that would help Croatia in combating terrorism and organised crime. Labourde said that the most frequent forms of organised crime in Europe were human trafficking and arms smuggling. (hina) vm