CRO SERB REPS ADVOCATE WITHDRAWAL OF INT ORGANISATIONS

ZAGREB, Jan 28 (Hina) - Leading officials of the recently established National Council of Serbs (NVS), Milan Djukic and Veselin Pejnovic, on Thursday stated it was high time Croat Serbs accepted civil life in Croatia and together with the Croatian government requested international organisations to leave these regions. At a press conference held in Zagreb, the council's officials said that forecasts by international community representatives, whereby new incidents could be expected in eastern Croatia, were nothing but the international community's way to instrumentalise the Serb question here and thus justify their own presence in Croatia. Pejnovic believes that most citizens in Croatia are dissatisfied with the circumstances faced by society as a whole and in this light, he says, it is imperative for Serb nationals to set their priorities in line with other citizens of Croatia. At the moment, these priorities are reconstruction, returns, and pensions. According to Djukic, a key issue for the Serb National Council is to deal with those legislative regulations in the country which are discriminatory towards nationality. Ascertaining that 350,000 Serb citizens from Croatia were still in exodus, Djukic stressed that Serbs in Croatia wanted to participate in their constitutional rights. Speaking about eastern Croatia, Pejnovic said the Serb community has been ghettoised. According to Pejnovic, 70,000 Serbs left the region during the "mandate" of Vojislav Stanimirovic, Milorad Pupovac, and Milos Vojnovic, political heads of the Serb minority. They are manipulating the entire Serb question in order to achieve their own personal interests, he said. Djukic and Pejnovic also claimed they believed the Croatian government was obligated to finance the Serb National Council. The NVS includes three political parties and several political associations within the Serb community in Croatia. (hina) sp/ha jn