BRIEF NEWS BULLETIN IN ENGLISH

BRIEF NEWS BULLETIN IN ENGLISH NO. 3282 HINA Zagreb, June 2, 1999 CACIC: HDZ'S DRAFT ELECTION BILL DIFFERS SIGNIFICANTLY FROM HDZ- OPPOSITION AGREEMENT ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - The draft election bill proposed by the head of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) parliamentary bench, Vladimir Seks, contains significant departures from a recent agreement between the HDZ and the Opposition Six, the new coordinator for the Opposition Six, Radimir Cacic, said in Zagreb on Wednesday. The Opposition Six - the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), Croatian People's Party (HNS), Croatian Peasants' Party (HSS), Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS) and the Liberal Party (LS) - has a number of objections to the draft election bill, Cacic said after today's meeting of the Opposition, which lasted several hours. The Opposition Six coordinator expressed doubt that the election law would be adopted by summer. He said he would suggest to Seks, as the chief negotiator for the HDZ, to meet again next Wednesday instead of Monday, as had been announced previously. Objections of the Opposition Six to the draft election bill concern models of transforming votes into parliamentary mandates for the electoral unit for Croatian citizens who do not have permanent residence in Croatia, as well as control mechanisms, the legal and the real election threshold etc. Cacic particularly objects to the fact that the HDZ draft in no way takes into consideration that the consensus on the election law will be possible only after some other crucial issues have been resolved, the main one being the transformation of Croatian Radio Television (HRT) into a public television. In this context Cacic also mentioned the law on electoral units and the election date. The Opposition will continue to insist on these questions, he added. The Opposition has nominated Mato Arlovic (SDP), Djurdja Adlesic (HSLS) and Bozo Kovacevic (LS) its representatives in a working group to draw up changes to the Law on HRT. According to Cacic, the Opposition Six has its own proposal regarding the election of minority parliamentary representatives. This applies not only to the election of Serb, but also of Bosniak and Slovene MPs. The number of MPs to be elected in nine electoral units in Croatia will be discussed further, Cacic said, adding there was a belief among the Opposition that each electoral unit should elect 14 representatives (the HDZ suggests 12). "Very unfair" was how Cacic described a proposal by the HDZ that the number of votes necessary for the election of one Diaspora representative be calculated in proportion to the number of votes in the electoral unit with the lowest turnout. Cacic believes an average turnout rate on the state level would be the only reasonable solution. He described a proposal by Anto Djapic (Croatian Party of Rights, HSP) on the postal ballot for the Diaspora as completely unacceptable. It is out of the question, the Opposition will not accept the booking of parliamentary seats nor will it accept a special Diaspora list, he added. He reiterated the Opposition's stance that the elections for the House of Representatives should be held as soon as possible due to the difficult economic situation, that is, in September, October or November. The Opposition will in no way accept elections during Christmas holidays, he said. The HDZ has announced that the elections would be held between Christmas and New Year holidays. SERB COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVE DISSATISFIED WITH HDZ DRAFT ELECTORAL BILL ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - Serb National Council president and MP Milorad Pupovac said on Wednesday he believed a draft electoral bill motioned by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was contrary to the valid Constitutional Law on the Rights of Minorities. The draft bill envisages only five representatives' seats for national minorities instead of the present seven. This motion is also contrary to the talks and agreement recently reached with the President of the Republic, Pupovac said. President Tudjman had told the Serb representatives the Serb community in Croatia could not have less rights in future legislation than at present, he added. The three existant seats in parliament for the Serb community cannot be reduced, Pupovac said. "If they take a different direction, we will consider the demand for an unfixed quota for the Serb community in Croatia, for those living in Croatia as for those out of the country," he announced. Mato Arlovic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) also assessed as contentious the suggestion that national minorities have five seats in the Sabor. It is a reduction of the rights national minorities have achieved, he asserted. CROATIAN FOREIGN MINISTER VISITS ESTONIA TALLINN, June 2 (Hina) - Estonia and Croatia, as small European countries with the same strategic goals, should continue to develop their cooperation in all fields, Estonia's and Croatia's Foreign Ministers, Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Mate Granic, assessed in Tallinn on Wednesday. The Croatian foreign minister is on a one-day official visit to Estonia. Granic today signed two agreements - on trade and economic cooperation and cultural cooperation. According to Granic, negotiations on another seven agreements should be concluded by the end of this year. The Croatian official also met a vice president of the Estonian Parliament, Tunne Kelam, the president of the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs, Andres Tarand, and Culture Minister Signe Kivi. CROATIAN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION MINISTER ATTENDS EU OBSERVERS' MEETING ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - Croatia's Minister for European Integration Ljerka Mintas-Hodak on Wednesday attended a regular session of the European Union Observer Mission leadership taking place at Plitvice Lakes in Croatia. The EU Observer Mission is presently active in Croatia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Albania; in Serbia and Montenegro activities have been temporarily suspended. According to a statement from the Croatian Government's Public and Media Relations Office, Mintas-Hodak acquainted the EU observers with the current political situation in Croatia, and Croatian Government activities relating to European integration. Mintas-Hodak pointed to Croatia's strategic commitment to fully take part in European integration processes, and advocated objectivity in evaluating progress in complying with internationally undertaken obligations. The minister also expressed satisfaction with the achieved level and establishment of open dialogue with the observer mission. ANOTHER VICTIM OF SERB AGGRESSION EXHUMED FROM WELL IN BERAK BERAK/MARINCI, June 2 (Hina) - Special teams of the Croatian Government Commission for Detained and Missing Persons on Wednesday exhumed the remains of another victim of the Serb aggression on Croatia from a well in the eastern Croatian village of Berak. The remains were discovered 16 metres bellow the ground. The well is about 30 metres deep and completely filled up with earth. According to statements of witnesses, the grave should contain the remains of at least another three persons. The exhumation of the well will continue. Croatian returnees in Berak on Wednesday continued their peaceful protest which began on May 7. The returnees demand that light be shed on the fate of 29 Croats from Berak who went missing during the Serb aggression on eastern Slavonia, and that Berak residents of Serb nationality who committed war crimes against Croats be brought to justice. The returnees stressed the protest would last until their demands are met. Croat returnees to Marinci, a village in the Croatian Danube River region near Vinkovci, started protesting for the same reasons four days ago. Five Marinci residents are still registered missing, and the returnees believe that Marinci residents of Serb nationality know more about their fate. TRIAL OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE VUKOVAR COUNTY COURT RESUMES VUKOVAR, June 2 (Hina) - After it had been discontinued on May 27, the trial of 22 Serbs charged with genocide and war crimes against civilians during the occupation of Vukovar resumed before the Vukovar County Court with the testimony of witness Ana Horvatinec. Stevan Curnic is the only indictee present at the trial while others are at large and are being tried in absentia. According to the witness, during the Serb attacks on Vukovar, she was a member of the 204th Croatian Army Brigade, and was in charge of care for the elderly and feeble. After the Serb forces entered Vukovar on November 18, 1991, together with other imprisoned Croatian soldiers and civilians Horvatinec was taken to a 'Velepromet' warehouse. There she was interrogated and beaten by 'the locals'. Along with Stevan Curnic, Nenad Zigic, who interrogated her, and Mirko Vojnovic, while there she also saw some of the other indictees. "I saw when Jakovljevic, called "Fridge", with a knife cut off the head of Goran Kovacevic and stuck it on a post. We were taken out and lined up to watch what they were doing because, as they told us, the same was going to happen to us. I remember one time when Pedja Marusinac, Simo Samardzija, Jakovljevic and Milan Vojnovic took out a young man, a soldier from Zagreb, put him on a circular saw and cut him in two", Horvatinec said. She also witnessed the execution of a group of prisoners, and saw a large number of bodies in the brickworks near the railway track. From the 'Velepromet' warehouse, where she spent four to five days, Horvatinec was transferred to a prison in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia. There she was tried for crimes she had allegedly committed against Vukovar Serbs and was sentenced to 20 years of close arrest. The witness was exchanged shortly before Christmas in 1991. Upon her arrival in Zagreb, she had to receive treatment due to traumas she had suffered. She now lives in Petrinja (some 50 km south-east of Zagreb). Horvatinec said she was not under the influence of any medication during today's testimony. Another witness, Damir Lili, was also to have testified today but he failed to appear before the court. The indicted in this trial, which has been conducted before the Vukovar County Court since May 25, are charged with active participation in the attempted ethnic cleansing of eastern Croatia and the creation of a Greater Serbia during the Serb occupation of Vukovar. CRO STATE ARCHIVE MANAGER TESTIFIES IN SAKIC WAR CRIMES TRIAL ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - The trial of war crimes suspect and commander of a Croatian World War Two concentration camp, Dinko Sakic, resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Wednesday with the testimony of Croatian State Archive (HDA) manager Josip Kolanovic. The witness spoke about archive material relating to victims of WW2 and of Jasenovac, the camp at one time commanded by the defendant. Kolanovic said the archives contain only fragments and not original material about the Jasenovac camp. The original material does not exist in any of the archives of the states which made up the former Yugoslav federation. A joint publication of all republic archives was issued in 1987, but it did not contain documents about Jasenovac either, he explained. Kolanovic divided the HDA documentation on WW2 victims into five categories. The first is material compiled between 1944 and 1947 by a national commission the task of which was to establish the extent of the war crimes committed by the occupying forces and their collaborators. According to Kolanovic, it was mainly based on witnesses' statements. Besides numerous legal provisions in force in the 1941-1945 Independent State of Croatia (NDH), the documentation also contains files of persons accused by witnesses of war crimes, as well as data on the place, time and method of the crimes. Kolanovic said there is a Sakic file which, alongside witnesses' accusations, also contains three original documents: a diploma on a decoration he received, a pay list with his name, and his signature on a document on the release of three inmates. The national commission documentation also contains a list of inmates who received packages, and two agendas detailing inmates' tasks for the period between mid-July 1944 and the end of January 1945. The agendas contain the names of Ustashi officials who led inmates' labour groups, but not the names of the inmates, only their numbers. Kolanovic said the national commission concluded that most documents relating to the Jasenovac camp had been destroyed just prior to the camp's closing in April 1945. The HDA however believes that "someone after the war took out the pages on the Jasenovac camp," he added. Also in HDA possession is the so called Anti-Fascist Women's Front Fund, which contains a book with personal data of Jasenovac camp female inmates, and a book with the names of 4,013 children brought to the Stara Gradiska concentration camp from Kozara Mountain and data on who the children had been given to. The HDA also possesses some documentation on Danica, a camp near Koprivnica, and nine boxes of archive material compiled in 1960 under the name "The Pavelic-Artukovic Indictment", with a list of part of the Jews killed in the NDH. The material in HDA possession also includes three surviving inmates' diaries from 1945. Kolanovic said the number of WW2 and Jasenovac victims had been compiled on three occasions; the first list, compiled by the national commission, had, according to Kolanovic, been made conscientiously. In its first report, the national commission listed 95,164 persons killed on Croatian territory. A revision was requested because the list included Ustashi and regular Croatian soldiers victims; the final figure was 59,512 victims. Kolanovic said "someone" in the world commission had compiled a notebook which brings annual data on 15,792 persons killed in the Jasenovac camp. According to the notebook, which lists only the victims from the territory of then Croatia and not those from Bosnia and Srijem, most people were killed in 1942. A total of 2,167 inmates were killed in 1944, the majority in the last four months. The defendant commanded the camp between April and November. The second list of victims, begun at the initiative of SUBNOR, a federation of liberation soldiers' associations, was never completed. Kolanovic believes it irrelevant as its aim was to list as many victims as possible. Like Vladimir Zerjavic, who testified on Monday, Kolanovic believes a list made in 1964 at Germany's request was the most realistic one. It was compiled by 30,000 people, including 7,000 in Croatia. The list is presently in Belgrade and is still considered top secret, Kolanovic said. "The HDA on several occasions requested the list, but they always refused," he pointed out, but added he had managed to obtain the list several months ago via unofficial routes. The list includes 25 books. The last category of HDA documents refers to the Dotrscina Project, in the making for almost a decade, the aim of which was to establish the number of people killed who had in some way been related to Zagreb. The project produced 115 books with brief biographies of some 14,000 victims, including 6,500 Jews. Kolanovic also presented statistical data which indicate that Jewish men and women were killed under equal criteria, whereas with Croats and Serbs, male victims were more numerous. "I suppose this was so because men were politically more active, while with Jews, the racial laws were implemented thoroughly," Kolanovic said, adding a list of people killed in the Zagreb area showed there were three times more Croat than Serb victims. Kolanovic reminded that in 1991 Croatia had been accused of beginning to destroy archive material related to WW2. Croatia refuted the accusations by delivering some 300,000 documents to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, he concluded. AERO LLOYD RESUMES FLIGHTS FROM GERMANY TO SPLIT SPLIT, June 2 (Hina) - Aero Lloyd, one of Germany's largest charter companies, on Wednesday resumed charter flights connecting Hamburg, Frankfurt and Dresden with the Croatian central Adriatic town of Split three times a week. Aero Lloyd's DC9 arrived at Split airport Wednesday, carrying the first 169 German tourists from Frankfurt and Dresden. The company resumed charter flights for Split after having cancelled all flights for Split and Dubrovnik due to the Kosovo crisis in April and May. Croatia's national air transport company Croatia Airlines had in the meantime taken over the transport of German passengers to Croatia. CROATIAN NATIONAL BANK DISCUSSES ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - The Croatian National Bank (HNB) Council on Wednesday held a session under the chairmanship of Governor Marko Skreb. The Council discussed the latest economic and financial developments and adopted several decisions within its jurisdiction, the HNB reported. Industrial production in the first four months of 1999 was three per cent lower than in the last year, the real turnover in retail trade in the first quarter was lower by 7.2 per cent, and the number of overnight stays fell by 9.8 per cent. Decreased economic activities have also been reported in traffic and construction industry in relation to the first months of 1998. There were 318,657 unemployed persons in Croatia in late April, which is 10.7 per cent more than the year before. A total of 1,343,412 persons were employed in the same period, which is 0.3 per cent less than in the same month last year. Despite this kind of economic environment, the supply of net salaries paid in March registered a real growth of 6.1 per cent in relation to the same month last year, and a 5.2 per cent increase in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. There have been no considerable oscillations in the kuna exchange rate for some time. The last month was completed with gross foreign currency reserves amounting to about US$2.6 billion, which is more than at the end of April. The trade deficit in the first quarter (expressed in dollars) was decreased by 17 per cent, but with a lower rate of trade with other countries: exports decreased by 11.1 per cent and imports by 13.7 per cent in comparison to the first quarter last year. The data on price movements in May are not available yet but no changes in relation to the rates from previous periods are expected. Financial authorities are closely following those financial indicators which can be a sign that there will be no deeper recession and those on developments in the banking sector. The indicators for the banking sector include the slowing down of the downward trend in the industrial production, improved liquidity in the banking sector and demand for cash money. According to the latest data, the outflow of foreign currency deposits, reported in the past two months, has abated. A considerably improved relation between income and expenditures in the state budget was also reported in April. It helped decrease the budgetary deficit to some 80 million kuna. Therefore, there was no additional indebtedness of the state with the central bank, but the debts still stagnate at a relatively high 1.3 billion kuna. DELIC SAYS BH ARMY GENERALS NOT GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES SARAJEVO, June 2 (Hina) - The commander of the army of Bosnia's Croat-Muslim Federation, General Rasim Delic, refuted as unfounded recent threats stating that some senior Bosnia-Herzegovina army officers could be charged with war crimes. General Delic told Sarajevo-based daily "Dnevni Avaz" in an interview published on Wednesday the statements made by Croatian Justice Minister Zvonimir Separovic to that effect were unfounded. Separovic recently said BH army generals Atif Dudakovic and Sead Delic had committed war crimes in Croatia in 1991 as officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). "Dudakovic had not even been present in Zadar when conflicts began, and he certainly did not issue orders on the use of artillery (of a JNA training centre)," Delic said. Speaking of General Sead Delic, the federal army commander said that Delic, while in Varazdin at the beginning of the war in Croatia, neither led nor planned any operations, but "only defended his own life, being seriously wounded and barely surviving in doing so." Delic also said he believes it is inappropriate to compare any BH army soldier with Fikret Abdic, whose extradition Bosnia has requested from Croatia to try him for war crimes. THIS BULLETIN INCLUDES ITEMS RELEASED BY 22:00 HRS WEDNESDAY