ZAGREB, March 25 (Hina) - The president of the Serb National Council (SNV), Milorad Pupovac, said on Monday that the Serb community in Croatia supported Prime Minister Ivica Racan and Foreign Minister Tonino Picula's policy and
stances towards the settling of Bosnian Croats into Croatia, but believed that some government officials and church representatives still wanted to implement the old settlement policy.
ZAGREB, March 25 (Hina) - The president of the Serb National Council
(SNV), Milorad Pupovac, said on Monday that the Serb community in
Croatia supported Prime Minister Ivica Racan and Foreign Minister
Tonino Picula's policy and stances towards the settling of Bosnian
Croats into Croatia, but believed that some government officials
and church representatives still wanted to implement the old
settlement policy. #L#
"The government has finally become aware that the wave of settling
had been planned to cause tension and instability in Croatia, and to
show that Croatia was not capable of implementing the return
policy, but only to settle the ethnic majority on its territory,
hindering its own interests in Bosnia," Pupovac told a news
conference.
Asked who these state and church officials are, Pupovac said he
could not be specific, but that they are people who were in charge of
issues of return and overall policy in areas of special government
concern.
Express accommodation was found for settled Croats, which were
carried out mostly at night and into homes owned by citizens of Serb
nationality.
The Serb community in Croatia and the SNV will do everything to make
it possible for Croats wishing to remain in Drvar (Republika
Srpska) to do so. They urge the Association of Settlers in Croatia
to cooperate in solving the problem, Pupovac said.
He called on the Bosnian Serb entity's authorities to publicly
declare not only the right to the restitution of property, but also
call on people to return, as Croatian President Stjepan Mesic did.
"Along with the support to the Constitutional reform in Bosnia, the
Croatian government is expected to take charge of regulating the
position of the Serb community in Croatia, " Pupovac said. He added
that Croatia's interest was not only in Bosnia, but in Croatia
itself, when it came to multiethniticity and the right of national
communities.
"Croatia must show that it is not a monoethnic state, but a state of
peoples which recognises and regulates the status of its newly
formed minorities. If it does not do so, it will lose credibility in
such efforts in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro," Pupovac said.
Reporters reminded him that Croats in Bosnia were a constitutive
people, and the will of the majority decided that they no longer be
constitutive. They asked Pupovac to explain what status he was
seeking for Serbs in Croatia.
"Serbs were a constitutive people in Croatia until 1990 and the will
of the majority decided that they no longer be so. They accepted
this and recognised the fact that they are a newly formed minority,
for which I myself voted in parliament, Pupovac said.
He added that the Serb community was only interested in having the
issue of the status of Serbs solved in line with the Erdut Agreement
and the Croatian government's Letter of Intent.
(hina) lml