ANNAN MEETS FOREIGN MINISTERS OF BH, CROATIA, MACEDONIA & SLOVENIA

NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Hina) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday received Foreign Ministers Tonino Picula of Croatia, Jadranko Prlic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alexander Dimitrov of Macedonia and Lojze Peterle of Slovenia. During the New York meeting, the foreign ministers of those four countries-successors to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), briefed Annan on their joint stand on the succession of the ex-Yugoslavia. After the presidents of these four countries gave a statement on the issue last week, the four ministers forwarded a joint letter to the chairman of the movement of non-aligned countries and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, explaining their stance about the equality of successor countries to the former Yugoslavia and asking for issues of Yugoslavia's membership in international organisations be solved as for any other new member country. They insisted that the fifth country-successor (the current Yugoslavia consisting of Serbia and Macedonia) cannot be privileged and cannot automatically inherit the status of the former Yugoslavia in international organisations. They added that a convincing argument for their stand is the fact that documents of the UN Security Council and General Assembly have for years read about the discontinuation of the state and legal existence of the SFRY. This week's efforts of Picula, Prlic, Peterle and Dimitrov have brought first results. During Thursday's session of the non- aligned countries, only officials of Iraq and North Korea spoke in favour of the current Yugoslavia. (hina) ms