PUHOVSKI: CRO SERB REFUGEES SHOULD BE GIVEN BACK TENANCY RIGHTS

BELGRADE, Dec 7 (Hina) - Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) president Zarko Puhovski has told the Belgrade-based agency Beta a large number of Croatian Serbs were not able to use their tenancy rights in Croatia "due to objective reasons" and that they should be given the opportunity to exercise them. "We are not saying that those rights have not expired... but many of them could not exercise their tenancy rights due to what in legal terms is called extreme need, danger to one's life, because there was no communication between Yugoslavia and Croatia and many of them were exiled to Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska," Puhovski said in Novi Sad. Puhovski participated in the first in a series of panel discussions, entitled "Talks About Trust and Reconciliation", which the Novi Sad Humanitarian Centre for Integration and Tolerance is to organise over the next year. Puhovski believes a decision must be made to extend the deadline for the submission of tenancy right claims for those persons who can prove they were not able to submit them timely. The current Croatian authorities, unlike the former ones, are not against the return of Serbs but they are not "making any special efforts to help them return either," Puhovski said. He believes the results of ethnic cleansing "have been cemented in all parts of the former Yugoslavia except in Vojvodina." (hina) sb rml