VATICAN REP REFUTES ALLEGATIONS BY US DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE

( Editorial: --> 8643 ) VATICAN, June 3 (Hina) - The chief of the Public Relations Office at the Holy See Wednesday refuted allegations made by US Deputy Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat who said that authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) had transferred treasure taken from Jews, Serbs and Romany to the Vatican. The Holy See's Joaqin Navarro Valls said these were old claims which had already been refuted. Valls said he had nothing to add to what he had said earlier. In July and December 1997 he said an inspection of documents at Vatican's IOR Bank revealed there existed no evidence that large quantities of money or gold had been stored there, i.e. that there was no evidence the "Ustasha treasure" had passed through the Vatican. The American diplomat stated that the then secretary of the Croatian Papal Bureau of St Jerome in Rome, Krunoslav Draganovic, had allegedly organised the escape of Ustashas and Nazis to South America. Valls said the Vatican had spoken on the matter in the 1980s. He reiterated that Draganovic had acted on his own, neither on behalf of St Jerome nor the Vatican, and that he had acted "exclusively out of humanitarian reasons." (hina) ha/bag jn 031744 MET jun 98