ILOK, July 29 (Hina) - Negotiations about a visit to a river islet in the Danube on the Croatian-Yugoslav border on Sunday, which ended in an armed incident, were held between the eastern Croatian town of Ilok and the Yugoslav
municipality of Backa Palanka, a Croatian official said on Sunday evening.
ILOK, July 29 (Hina) - Negotiations about a visit to a river islet in
the Danube on the Croatian-Yugoslav border on Sunday, which ended
in an armed incident, were held between the eastern Croatian town of
Ilok and the Yugoslav municipality of Backa Palanka, a Croatian
official said on Sunday evening. #L#
"I am certain, and this has been confirmed by Backa Palanka
municipal head Zvezdan Kisic, that the Yugoslav side knew about our
intention to visit the Sarengrad islet on the Danube," said the
prefect of eastern Croatia's Vukovar-Srijem County, Nikola Safer.
He had headed a local Croatian delegation whom the Yugoslav army
apprehended, firing shots into the air and the water, to a barracks
in Backa Palanka on Sunday afternoon.
A resident of Sarengrad, a town on the Croatian bank of the Danube,
who was part of the Croatian delegation, said the delegation headed
for the islet only after Kisic obtained all the necessary permits
from the Yugoslav authorities.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic on Sunday evening
regretted the incident, saying it had occurred because "evidently
not all police and military bodies were acquainted with the local
authorities' initiative to visit the Sarengrad river islet."
Svilanovic said the residents of Sarengrad were to blame as well as
they "failed to obtain all the necessary permits."
The islet is in Croatian cadastral books but has been under Yugoslav
army control since 1991.
(hina) ha