WAR IN BH PRODUCED 2.5 MILLION REFUGEES

SARAJEVO, June 13 (Hina) - During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, over 2.5 million persons, namely 56 percent of the Bosnia- Herzegovina population, fled their homes, president of the Bosnia- Herzegovina Helsinki Committee for Human Right Srdjan Dizdarevic said Monday. In an interview published in Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" Monday, Dizdarevic said even today, four years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement, 712,000 Bosnia-Herzegovina citizens live outside of the country, while 810,000 persons in Bosnia- Herzegovina live out of their homes, namely they have the displaced person status. "The return process is slow and we cannot be satisfied with it", Dizdarevic said. He said that particularly disturbing was a small number of a so- called minority returns. "Members of minority ethnic groups who returned to their pre-war homes do not represent more than 10 percent of the returnees in any municipality", the president of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Helsinki Committee said. According to the Committee, the highest criteria in the respect of human rights are still valid in Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, they are constantly being violated. This primarily refers to basic rights -- the right to chose a place to live, free movement, appropriate accommodation, the right to work, freedom of religion and education. Dizdarevic believes that the greatest problem was the fact that the return process from the very beginning was treated as an experiment and fundamental preconditions have not been set for its implementation. "Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities remained with their war goals, namely the establishment of ethnically cleansed territories", he concluded. (hina) it jn