MACEDONIAN JUSTICE MINISTER APOLOGISES TO CROATIAN AMBASSADOR

SKOPJE, Sept 29 (Hina) - Macedonian Justice Minister Vlado Kambovski visited the Croatian Embassy in Skopje and apologised to Ambassador Vitomir Miro Lasic for a tendentious "newspaper speculations" regarding a lecture Kambovski held in Struga on September 16. Kambovski claimed that at no time did he even indicate that he connected Croatian president Franjo Tudjman to war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia during its falling apart and the greater Serbian aggression on Croatia. According to Kambovski, some talks with the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Louise Arbour, focused on the indictment against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. At the time Arbour indicated the possibility that the other two presidents, Franjo Tudjman and Bosnia-Herzegovina's Alija Izetbegovic, were not without sin either, and that Kambovski, as justice minister in Ante Markovic's government could testify to that effect. Having accepted the entire issue as a joke, Kambovski said he had "promised" to go to The Hague as a witness. He had told the story exclusively as an anecdote at a conference in Struga. According to Kambovski, his statements had been used by reporters in the opposition's "Jutarnje novine" paper to cause a sensation. "I am a true friend of Croatia in which I earned by Master's degree, in which I have many friends, and I am a personal acquaintance of President Tudjman from the times of turbulent events in the former Yugoslavia, and my stance of years about Croatia are well-known. I apologise for this newspaper speculation which hurt me deeply too," Kambovski said. (hina) lml jn