PRESIDENT MESIC MEETS DELEGATION OF FAMILIES OF MISSING, IMPRISONED

ZAGREB, April 19 (Hina) - A delegation of the Alliance of Associations of the Families of Missing and Imprisoned Croatian Soldiers on Wednesday held a meeting with President Stipe Mesic, at which they requested Croatians secret services to join in investigations regarding missing and imprisoned soldiers, and the uncovering of mass and individual grave sites. After the meeting, which lasted one hour, the Alliance's president Josip Jugec said the Alliance was seeking the assistance of secret services because it did not have access to data on newly discovered graves. Recalling a statement by the Minister of Homeland War Soldiers, Ivica Pancic, that numerous documents had been discovered during operations aimed at liberating the town of Knin and that even after five years no one made effort to study them, Jugec said he expected the documentation to contain data on the places of execution of Croatian soldiers. According to Jugec, today's meeting also helped solve the problem of a million-dollar-worth donation containing chemicals for the identification of remains with the help of the DNA method, which was held up on the border due to a lack of money for customs fees. The delegation also expressed dissatisfaction with the relation of the media toward the problem of missing and imprisoned soldiers. Unequal treatment can be seen best in the media coverage of "the Gospic case", which receives major coverage, while the identifications of killed Homeland War soldiers go almost unnoticed. According to the Alliance, 125 mass and a large number of individual graves have been discovered in Croatia so far. Of 3,052 persons who were reported missing, the fate of 1,422 was discovered and the others are still being searched for. A total of 3,128 bodies were exhumed and 2,494 have been identified. (hina) jn rml