CROATIAN CULTURE MINISTER VISITS CANADA

( Editorial: --> 4894 ) OTTAWA, July 1 (Hina) - Croatian Culture Minister Bozo Biskupic, who is visiting Canada at the invitation of the Canadian Cultural Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, on Tuesday met the state secretary for multicultural and women-related issues, Hedy Fry. A statement from the Croatian Culture Ministry said that Biskupic and his hosts discussed Canadian and Croatian experiences in multicultural issues. Biskupic stressed the role of minorities and their contribution to Croatia's cultural sector, as well as the role of the Croatian Constitution and laws which enable equality in culture. It was agreed that Croatia should participate in the "2000 - Tolerance" project, to be carried out by young people. Biskupic is attending an international conference on cultural differences and development in Ottawa. He spoke at the conference about culture as a source of diversity and the problem of violence in culture. Biskupic stressed the need to organise a conference on violence in, through and against culture and proposed that Croatia be the organiser. The conference would tackle topics such as closed borders for artists and art, negative aspects and domination of new technologies, language domination and many other examples which are detrimental to small peoples and minority groups. The Croatian Culture Minister proposed the establishment of a "culturelink" network described as "culture with no visa requirements", which would offer the best possibility for creating a database of cultural policies of European countries and other parts of the world. Biskupic's proposal was supported by the Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, who chaired the plenary session. Axworthy called on other participants in the conference to support Biskupic's proposal. (hina) jn rml /mbr 011407 MET jul 98