PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SEPAROVIC TALKS TO PRESS IN ZADAR

ZADAR, Jan 15 (Hina) - "I will do everything good for Croatia. I will force the government, under threat of dissolving it, to fulfil its promises," independent presidential candidate Zvonimir Separovic told reporters in Zadar on Saturday. "In the past mistakes were made, privatisation was unfair, there was corruption, and in the seven months of my ministerial mandate (for justice) I could not change many things," Separovic said. If elected Croatia's new president at January 24 elections, he said he would endeavour to stop the growing rate of unemployment by year's end. Separovic reminded Croatia has not yet resolved the issue of its borders, and that recently there has been an extension of the mandate of United Nations observers on Prevlaka, Croatia's southern-most tip bordering with Yugoslavia. We must be energetic in resolving the Prevlaka issue, or it will become another Cyprus, he said. Commenting on yesterday's verdicts of guilty for five Bosnian Croats tried for ethnic cleansing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Separovic said Judge Cassese made a cardinal error by sentencing defendant Vladimir Santic to 25 years in prison. According to international law, an extradited party must not be given a sentence longer than the maximum one he would receive in his home country, which in Croatia is 20 years, Separovic said. (hina) ha