NEW CROAT INITIATIVE URGES BOSNIAN CROATS TO FACE UP TO CRIMES

SARAJEVO, Sept 21 (Hina) - The New Croat Initiative (NHI), a Bosnian Croat party, has called on all Bosnian Croats to face up to the fact that there are individuals among them who are responsible for war crimes and not allow to be misled by the propaganda conducted by the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ BiH). In a statement sent to the media in Sarajevo on Thursday, the party said it was true that the Croat people in Bosnia-Herzegovina had been jeopardised in the past two years, but not by some kind of international conspiracy but by the "primitive two-faced policy" of the HDZ leadership and the incompetence, lack of interest and corruption of a large part of representatives of that party in the bodies of authority. "The NHI urges the Croat people to face the fact that in the Croat Defence Council - as against a vast majority of Croats who defended themselves, their native areas, rights and interests - there were individuals and groups who are responsible for the violation of regulations of international war and humanitarian law. For some of them, membership in the HVO during the war and after it was only a mask for criminal and other dishonourable activities, including terrorism and drug smuggling," said the statement, signed by the party president Kresimir Zubak. (hina) jn rml