ZAGREB, July 25 (Hina) - The Presidency of the Serb People's Council (SNV) on Thursday urged the government to return proportional minority representation into a constitutional bill on the rights of national minorities, which
parliament will discuss next week.
ZAGREB, July 25 (Hina) - The Presidency of the Serb People's Council
(SNV) on Thursday urged the government to return proportional
minority representation into a constitutional bill on the rights of
national minorities, which parliament will discuss next week. #L#
If the bill is not changed in the sense that it decreases or limits
national minority rights, it could represent a good basis for the
beginning of a minority policy in Croatia as it offers a solid
foundation which can be built upon even after adoption in
parliament, SNV president Milorad Pupovac said at a press
conference on Thursday.
He added the SNV had asked that proportional representation for
national minorities be reinstated in the bill for executive
authority bodies in units of local government and self-
government.
The SNV Presidency considers that positive discrimination should
be preserved in the bill. Pupovac added that such a legal provision
was vital to the realisation of minority rights.
The right to minority self-government on the state level remains a
significant and open issue of this law, Pupovac said.
He emphasised that the Joint Council of predominantly Serb
municipalities in eastern Croatia would not be abolished but
transformed into a form of minority self-government in keeping with
the constitutional law.
He objected that the question of minority rights should be brought
in connection with the rights of the Croatian diaspora because, he
said, this was a legitimate issue that the state had to deal with in
an appropriate manner.
Asked by journalists to comment on a statement by Yugoslav Foreign
Minister Goran Svilanovic during Pupovac's visit to Belgrade to the
effect that the percentage of Serbs in the latest Croatian
population census was the result of ethnic cleansing, Pupovac
stressed that Svilanovic did not say that Croats had ethnically
cleansed Serbs in Croatia.
He recalled Svilanovic's previous statement that former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic's policy was responsible for the
percentage of Serbs in Croatia.
He reminded that Svilanovic later said that the fall was indeed a
repercussion of ethnic cleansing without specifying whether this
referred to former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman or
Milosevic.
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