LIFE IS RETURNING TO VUKOVAR

VUKOVAR, Nov 17 (Hina) - Twelve years after the start of the war in Croatia, life is returning to the still empty and only partially rebuilt streets of Vukovar. #L# The Croatian government has invested around two billion kuna into the reconstruction of the town. Vukovar today has some 28,000 residents - 17,000 Croats and 11,000 Serbs. According to the regional office for refugees in Vukovar, slightly more than 11,000 people, mostly Croats, have returned to the town. Around 4,000 Vukovar residents are still in exile, expecting reconstruction and return, which mostly depend on employment possibilities. According to the Employment Bureau, more than 7,000 people were looking for a job in the Vukovar area in October this year, and half of the job-seekers were aged between 35 and 54. According to data from the Vukovar General Hospital, 1,624 people, including 12 children, were killed in the 1991 Serb aggression on Vukovar. A total of 905 people were killed before Serb military and paramilitary forces broke the town's defence lines on 18 November 1991. The hospital has information about the wounding of 1,219 people - 533 civilians, 30 children, 550 soldiers and 106 police members. The national association of former inmates of Serb concentration camps says that some 8,000 soldiers and civilians were imprisoned in Serb concentration camps. Some 22,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from Vukovar. The state prosecutor's offices in Vukovar and Osijek have pressed charges against more than 400 persons for war crimes committed against Croats and members of other nationalities in Vukovar. Yugoslav People's Army commanders Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic are awaiting trial in The Hague for the killing of 200 patients and civilians from the Vukovar hospital at a farm in Ovcara outside Vukovar on 20 November 1991. Although they live close to one another, the Croat and Serb communities in Vukovar live separate lives. As Croats demand the punishment of war criminals and those who are in any way involved in the aggression on Vukovar, local Serbs mostly shun the topic of war and talk about it as a civil conflict for which both sides are equally responsible. At the same time, both communities are equally affected by unemployment and communal and other problems. (hina) rml sb