WAR VETERANS: KOSTUNICA'S APOLOGY WOULD BE POLITICAL HYPOCRISY

DUBROVNIK, Nov 27 (Hina) - There is no apology of Yugoslav President for the 1991 Greater Serbian aggression against Croatia which could "give us back our dead" and his apology "would be only political hypocrisy", Croatian war veterans who voluntarily joined the Homeland Defence War in southern Croatia, said in Dubrovnik on Monday. The volunteer freedom fighters today issued a statement reacting upon Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's statement that a unilateral apology to the Croatian people would be just a part of the truth as, for him, problems date back to 1941. Claiming that the problems stemmed from 1941, Kostunica ignored a century-long constant of the policy of a greater Serbia and he attributed causes of the 1991 war only to crimes which Ustashi (Croatian Fascists) committed against Croatian Serbs during the Second World War. Addressing the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the veterans wrote that "the people in this area suffered not only nine or ten years ago. That was the Croatian people who suffered in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as well as in the artificial entity of the brotherhood and unity, while our hometown of Dubrovnik and its surroundings has several times been set on fire by 'our dear and benevolent' neighbours," read the veterans' statement alluding to the fact that the Croatian people was deprived of its national and economic rights during the Serb- dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) and to a Communist slogan from the second Yugoslavia (1945-1991) which also was used to disguise a greater Serbian policy. (hina) jn ms