VUKOVAR, June 27 (Hina) - Croatia's Minister of Homeland War Veterans, Ivica Pancic, on Tuesday visited teams of the Government's commission in charge of the search for missing and abducted soldiers and civilians, who are working in
the war-ravaged eastern town of Vukovar conducting test excavations in order to find out possible graves and mass graves.
VUKOVAR, June 27 (Hina) - Croatia's Minister of Homeland War
Veterans, Ivica Pancic, on Tuesday visited teams of the
Government's commission in charge of the search for missing and
abducted soldiers and civilians, who are working in the war-ravaged
eastern town of Vukovar conducting test excavations in order to
find out possible graves and mass graves.#L#
The teams have been working there for two weeks.
Pancic described the search and exhumation of missing persons as
"one of the most difficult issues Croatia is faced with".
He promised that "the Government will do its best to help accelerate
the exhumation and identification process."
According to Pancic, "owing to political reasons and tacit
agreements with Belgrade, former authorities in Croatia failed to
do what they should have done to complete the process, although
there were verbal demands on speeding up the process of exhumation
and identification."
In this context, Pancic added that this was proved by the
documentation found in Croatian secret services' offices taken
from the Serb rebels (the so-called Krajina authorities), which
contains many data processed by Serb themselves, their police or
hospitals, but in which our services showed no interest later.
Pancic said the (incumbent) Government decided that relevant
bodies and ministries, primarily the Croatian Interior Ministry,
along with secret services, should start tackling the problem in
the most serious manner.
While touring one well, suspected to be a site of a mass grave,
Pancic met the Commission's head, Ivan Grujic who informed the
Minister of their efforts in test excavations.
According to Grujic, to date 3,142 victims of the Serb aggressions
have been dug up from 125 mass graves or individual graves. Of them,
2,512 have been identified.
The commission is still trying to establish what happened with
1,605 persons reported as either missing or abducted.
The commission has received reports that there are about 60
possible sites of mass graves in Vukovar.
(hina) mm ms