YUGOSLAVIA HANDS OVER REMAINS OF 13 PERSONS TO CROATIA

ILOK, March 21 (Hina) - Yugoslav representatives on Thursday handed over to Croatia the remains of 12 unidentified persons, buried during the war in Croatia at a cemetery in Novi Sad. These persons are believed to be from a list of missing and imprisoned people Croatia is trying to trace. #L# Along with the 12 bodies, the Yugoslav side also handed over the remains of Croatian citizen Kata Boros, who was also buried at the Novi Sad cemetery. The head of the Croatian government's Office for Missing and Imprisoned Persons, Ivan Grujic, said that so far Yugoslavia had handed over to Croatia 42 files on unidentified persons. The preliminary identification of the 12 bodies was performed on the basis of those files. "The next step is the establishment of their full identity at the Zagreb Forensics Institute," Grujic said. The next meeting of Croatian and Yugoslav representatives will make new exhumations and the hand-over of remains possible. Croatia expects to obtain all remaining protocols from Novi Sad at the meeting. It is believed that around 80 unidentified persons were buried at the Novi Sad cemetery. "The next location after Novi Sad is Sremska Mitrovica," Grujic said, adding that Croatia was looking for 300 persons who were believed to have been buried in Serbia. The head of the Yugoslav commission for humanitarian issues and missing persons, Nikola Maljkovic, said 103 unidentified persons were buried at the cemetery in Sremska Mitrovica. The Yugoslav side has information that unidentified persons believed to be from Croatia's list of missing persons were also buried in the areas of Belgrade and Sombor. Maljkovic said the process of exhumation and the hand-over of remains would continue until there were no more missing. (hina) rml