SABOR TO DISCUSS MISSING AND IMPRISONED PERSONS

ZAGREB, Jan 14 (Hina) - Vice-president of the Croatian National Sabor (parliament) Jadranka Kosor held talks on Thursday with representatives of the alliance of associations of families of missing and imprisoned soldiers of the Croatian Homeland War. The talks focused on mine-clearing possible mass grave sites, the identification process and marking mass grave sites. In a press statement after the talks which were held behind closed doors, Kosor stressed the need for the whereabouts of 1,795 persons listed as missing or imprisoned to be disclosed, for the initiation of the identification process of persons whose bodies have been found, and for marking mass grave sites in Banovina (central Croatia). I presented a brief overlook of a report which will be submitted to the Sabor. The most important issue is continuity in the search for missing and imprisoned persons through negotiations with representatives from FR Yugoslavia and Bosnian Serbs, chairman of the Commission for Missing and Imprisoned Persons, Ivan Grujic, said. The result of these negotiations was a protocol on 1,093 persons, 341 of which were not identified. Since then, 133 people have been identified, Grujic stressed. Assessing that the identification process was too slow, president of the association of families of missing or imprisoned Croatian Homeland War soldiers, Josip Jugec, said 650 bodies had been exhumed, but not identified. Jugec requested that laboratories in Zagreb, Split and Osijek be included in the elaborate and complex identification process. President of the association "Croatian Phoenix", Ljubica Butula, recalled that the identification was being carried out solely by the Zagreb University forensic sciences laboratory. By the present tempo, the process could last another ten years, she stressed. Butula expressed hope that the parliament would make decisions which would expedite the identification process. (hina) lml mm