CORRECTING ITEM HNA0528 HEADLINED "DEL PONTE TO VISIT LOCATIONS..."

ZAGREB, May 3 (Hina) - Please note than Croatian President Stjepan Mesic will not meet International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, as reported in item HNA0528, headlined "DEL PONTE TO VISIT LOCATIONS FROM MILOSEVIC INDICTMENT". The President's Office said in a statement Mesic would be on a visit to the United States (May 5-8). The correct items should read: ZAGREB, May 3 (Hina) - The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla del Ponte, will visit Vukovar on May 7 and tour all locations from the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, a senior government source said on Friday. #L# Del Ponte will visit Croatia on 6 and 7 May and hold courtesy meetings with Prime Minister Ivica Racan and the ambassadors of European Union countries in Zagreb. During the visit to Vukovar, del Ponte will meet some 15 witnesses who survived Serbian crimes and members of an association of missing and imprisoned persons from Sotin, as well as visit the Vukovar hospital and Ovcara near Vukovar. The visit to the eastern parts of Croatia will start in Erdut, where war criminal Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan had a training camp, and end in Ilok, where a local priest will describe to the ICTY prosecutor the exodus of local Croats during the Serbian aggression. Del Ponte should also visit Dalj, the Lovas farm, Borovo Selo, Bogdanovci, Vukovar, Ovcara, Sotin and Tovarnik. The government source believes the visit to Vukovar is the result of one and a half years of patient work and building of trust between the Hague prosecution and the Croatian government. None of the witnesses who are to meet del Ponte are in the witness protection programme, but it is possible that some of them will not appear in public, the source said. Croatian officials to attend official talks with del Ponte in Vukovar are Deputy Prime Minister Goran Granic, Justice Minister Ingrid Anticevic Marinovic, and the head of the government's Office for Cooperation with the International Court of Justice, Orsat Miljanic. With regard to cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Croatia proposes that domestic courts take over all cases which the Hague tribunal has completed up to the issuing of the indictment, said the source, adding that Croatia had demonstrated that it was capable of conducting such trials. The source neither confirmed nor denied claims that the Croatian police were conducting investigations regarding some war crimes. It dismissed speculation that the Hague tribunal would issue indictments against five more Croatian citizens. Asked about the trial of General Mirko Norac and the so-called Gospic group, indicted for war crimes against civilians in Gospic in 1991, the source said that it was not good to comment on trials that were underway, but added that there had been some concern in The Hague due to the initial stalling of the process by defence attorneys. The trial is now progressing faster than it would in The Hague, the source said, expressing hope there would be no objections to the trial. Croatia will cooperate with the Hague tribunal in the Milosevic case as much as the tribunal requests, the source said. The source is confident that the indictment against former Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic will be expanded. (hina) it