COUNCIL OF EUROPE RAPPORTEURS TO VISIT CROATIA YET AGAIN

( Editorial: --> 3206 ) STRASBOURG, June 23 (Hina) - Council of Europe (CoE) rapporteurs in charge of supervising Zagreb's compliance with its obligations from an agreement on CoE membership will visit Croatia in July. The main objective of the visit will be to determine the state of the trust establishment process, one of the two rapporteurs, Gunnar Jansson, told the press in Strasbourg on Tuesday. The CoE rapporteurs will use the opportunity to find out whether there have been any changes since their last visit that would call for amendments in the draft outline of a report on Croatia. The rapporteurs are now waiting for the Croatian Government's reaction to the draft, which they made after their visit to Croatia in October 1997 and presented to Zagreb on April 14. "The official deadline for a response is July 15 and I believe that the Government will send it to Strasbourg next week," said Nikola Obuljen, the leader of the Croatian delegation to the CoE Parliamentary Assembly. He stressed that Croatia found the draft unbalanced because it focused on the return of Serbs, while ignoring the 21 conditions that Croatia bound itself to in November 1996 when it joined the Council. "We agreed that the return of refugees was a serious problem, but that does not mean that it can compose four-fifths of the report," Obuljen told Croatian reporters. On the other hand, Jansson described the draft as balanced and stressed he did not believe that after his visit to Croatia it would undergo major changes. When asked whether he thought that Croatia fulfilled the conditions it signed when it joined the oldest European political organisation, Jansson answered that it fulfilled general conditions by ratifying the mandatory conventions and the CoE charter. However, signing and ratifying documents is not enough as they should also be implemented, Jansson said. The draft report of the monitoring committee calls for the continued monitoring of Croatia's compliance with its obligations regarding minority and human rights and freedom of the media, implementation of the Erdut agreement and the Dayton accords, cooperation with international war crimes tribunal in The Hague and the status of Croatian Serbs. The draft also says that prior to the next election Croatia should co-ordinate its election law with recommendations by CoE monitors and with those of other international organisations. (Hina) mro jn /mbr 232128 MET jun 98