CROATIAN HELSINKI COMMITTEE REACTS TO MINISTERS' STATEMENTS

ZAGREB May 28 (Hina) - Commenting on statements made at a joint press conference last Wednesday by the Croatian Justice and Interior Ministers, Zvonimir Separovic and Ivan Penic, regarding a report by the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) on events during the military-police operation "Storm", HHO president Vjekoslav Vidovic on Friday assessed the statements as unfounded and as such denounced them entirely. "The HHO's report was written to warn the Croatian Government that it was high time to initiate proceedings for crimes committed following Operation 'Storm', and not to defame the Croatian people and their homeland", Vidovic said. Vidovic claims that the HHO sent the report to international organisations only after the Croatian Government had ignored it. Petar Mrkalj, the head of the HHO's section for grave human rights violations, stressed that "the ministers should have used the HHO's report as a basis for a review of procedures which were not conducted well". Emphasising that the "HHO does not negate the legitimacy of Operation 'Storm'", Mrkalj said the report did not relate to the entire operation but rather to the repercussions of the action in the former UN Sector South. He denounced Penic's statement that several cases in the report were repeated several times. Mrkalj explained that the report consisted of two sections. "The introduction contains cases and the names of the persons concerned, and these names are mentioned in the second section in a list of names of individual victims", said Mrkalj. As he said, this was not a "repetition of cases". Mrkalj demanded that Minister Penic make a statement regarding, as he put it, the "destruction of Donji Lapac, the village of Grubor near Plavno, and to shed light on the Komic case near Udbina". The HHO demands that Minister Penic specifically explain the crimes committed in an effort to avoid accusations against the entire Croatian Army, said Mrkalj. He considered the statements by Penic and Separovic as an attempt to "cover up the truth and a call to lynch those who wrote the report". HHO's Tatjana Sijan, in charge of legal issues, demanded that Separovic release details regarding individual crimes and those accused of them. "Fleeting claims about 5,000 claims is an obstruction of justice", she said. (hina) sp/rml