BELGRADE HOSTS INT. CONFERENCE ON RECONCILIATION IN THE BALKANS

BELGRADE, Oct 25 (Hina) - Authorities in Belgrade should start earmarking funds to pay damages for suffering caused by crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, a member of the Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Commission said on Thursday. #L# Aleksandar Lojpur addressed a two-day international conference called "The Balkans Towards Reconciliation", which pooled participants from all successor states to the former federation. The event was organised by the German "Konrad Adenauer" and the French "Robert Schumann" foundations. "Our intellectual team incited the crimes, while our military and paramilitary teams carried them out," said Lojpur. Speaking of the destruction of Croatia's Vukovar and Bosnia's Sarajevo and the killing of civilians and prisoners-of-war, Lojpur said a "climate supporting the vilest crimes" was being created in Serbia. Efforts should be invested "to make citizens feel ashamed about those crimes, which will lead to the creation of foundations for lasting confidence," he added. Vehid Sehic of the Tuzla Citizens Forum said that in the Balkans criminals were prosecuted and guilt was determined "because of others and not because of ourselves". He advocated prosecuting all criminals, fully supporting the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, and creating conditions which would enable national courts to hold war crimes trials. Vesna Terselic, a representative for the Croatian Anti-War Campaign, said that on the level of states "reconciliation is but a distant dream". Responsibility lies with all the citizens who gave their votes to former Croatian and Yugoslav Presidents Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic, "even though they didn't know what those two would do," she stated. French Ambassador to Yugoslavia Gabriel Keller said it was pointless to seek an apology from the other side. The apology "should stem from maturity and thinking about the past," he said. German Ambassador Kurt Leonberger said his country would not have been able to denazify itself after World War Two alone. "There is no collective but only individual guilt, but there is collective responsibility," he said. He hoped for reconciliation among the former Yugoslav states, considering that "France and Germany, after three wars, including two world wars, were able to do it". (hina) ha sb