RESTORED VUKOVAR ARTEFACTS OFFICIALLY HANDED OVER

VUKOVAR, Dec 13 (Hina) - Croatian Assistant Culture Minister Branka Sulc and Yugoslav Assistant Foreign Minister Aleksandra Joksimovic on Thursday signed and exchanged reports on the hand-over of Vukovar Museum artefacts, thus officially marking the restitution of artefacts stolen from the town museum, art gallery, the Antun Bauer gallery, the Franciscan monastery, and the Church of St. Philip and Jacob during the Serbian occupation of the town in 1991. Attending today's hand-over ceremony at the Vukovar Museum were Croatian Culture Minister Antun Vujic, Assistant Yugoslav Culture Minister Jovan Despotovic, Vojvodina Assembly President Nenad Canak and representatives of the Museums of Novi Sad and Vojvodina, who handed Vukovar Museum head Ruza Maric photos and documents which had been kept in depositories in Novi Sad. The Vukovar artefacts had been stored for the past ten years in Novi Sad and Vojvodina museum depositories. A protocol on the transfer of the treasure from Novi Sad to the Vukovar Museum was signed in Belgrade on December 7. Croatian and Yugoslav experts have established that the Vukovar museum collection in Novi Sad depositories includes 2,246 pieces of art from the Bauer collection and the Vukovar Art Gallery, 253 artefacts from the town's cultural-historical collection, archaeological and numismatic artefacts, inventory books, some library books, and part of the collection from the Vukovar Franciscan monastery and the Church of St. Philip and Jacob. Most artefacts were returned to Vukovar in the past two days and the last convoy, with the cultural and historical material and part of the Franciscan monastery treasure, arrived in Vukovar today. Sulc said she was confident the return of the artefacts and the talks on cultural cooperation, to start in Zagreb today, would be another step forward in relations between the two countries. Yugoslavia's Joksimovic said the Vukovar cultural treasure had great value. The artefacts were not on display but were kept in the depositories of Novi Sad museums in the past ten years, she said. The return of the Vukovar artefacts is the result of talks between Yugoslav and Croatian Foreign Ministers Goran Svilanovic and Tonino Picula in New York a month ago, she said. According to the Croatian Culture Ministry, around 20,000 Vukovar artefacts went missing during the Serbian occupation of the town. Participants in today's hand-over ceremony, including representatives of the town authorities, members of the local Serb minority, and a large number of Croatian and Yugoslav reporters and TV crews visited an exhibition of restored artefacts, staged in just a few hours at the Vukovar Museum. (hina) rml