CROATIA'S PRESIDENT TUDJMAN VISITS BELI MANASTIR

BELI MANASTIR, June 2 (Hina) - During his Monday visit to Beli Manastir, eastern Croatia, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, accompanied by high Croatian officials, held a meeting behind closed doors with the leaders of the newly elected local authorities in the Osijek-Baranja County and the Serb Democratic Independent Party. After the meeting, Tudjman addressed the councillors of the Osijek-Baranja County Assembly, the officials of the County's self-government and the region's businessmen. At the beginning, the Croatian President thanked the area's UN transitional administrator, Jacques Klein, on the successful completion of the process of peaceful reintegration, pointing out it would be one of UN's first successful missions in the world. "The Croatian leadership has accepted the peaceful reintegration in spite of requests for that problem to be solved militarily", President Tudjman said, adding that Croatia had opted for the peace process, in order to show that it wanted a democratic and peaceful solution, and to show that it did not want all Serbs to leave Croatia. "We want to give all Serbs who accept Croatia as their country the possibility to be full-right citizens and to build their future in it", the Croatian President said. "I think that, thanks to joint efforts, we have succeeded in that, and that this would be the contribution of Croatia's democracy to international understanding, the solution of the crisis in Bosnia- Herzegovina and the normalization of relations between Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", President Tudjman stressed and pointed out that his visit to the Baranja region was evidence of the Croatian leadership's resoluteness to implement the peaceful reintegration and to establish a democratic constitutional-legal order. "We shall make all-embracing efforts to heal the wounds of the past as soon as possible, which won't be easy", President Tudjman further said, pointing out that the refugees' return alone would demand a lot of patience, and that there would arise objective difficulties in creating a reconciliation and mutual trust. He called on Croatian displaced persons from that area to find political wisdom and reason within themselves, and stressed that it was "human to forgive, because of life, so as not to renew the evils we have suffered, and in order to create better living conditions for present- day and future generations." Recalling that the Yugo-communist and greater-Serbia imperialistic demands towards Croatia could not be renewed, Croatia's President said that as long as 20 years ago he had proposed "the scandinavization of that region", which meant "mutual recognition of state and national- ethnic co-existence." "Your destiny is in your hands", President Tudjman told both Croatians and Serbs in the eastern Croatian Baranja region, calling on them to remove all extremists, which the Croatian Government would do as well. "There are extremists all over the world. The authority alone cannot be responsible for single excesses, but we, all together, both the authority and the population, must be responsible and must remove all extreme elements", President Tudjman said. Croatia would realize the normal functioning of the legal order at any cost, he said, adding that the Amnesty Act would also be applied consistently. Stressing that only war criminals who had bloodied their hands would go to trial, the Croatian President said that "there would be no more lists of war criminals of any sort. We don't want to open old wounds with subsequent accusations, but we want to provide conditions for a normal co-existence of all citizens who wish to live in Croatia as soon as possible." Speaking about the economic future of the Baranja region, President Tudjman pointed out that Croatia would use its experience in privatization there as well. The transition from the socialist system to the system of free market and private entrepreneurship was extremely difficult, he said. "Our aim is to solve these problems in the interest of every local region and the people who live there", President Tudjman added, calling on all local officials to take an efficacious part in the solution of those problems. Baranja was one of Croatia's richest regions and had conditions for its product to sell not only on Croatia's, but the world's market as well, Tudjman said. At the end of his speech, Croatia's President advocated a speedy completion of the process of peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube region and the creation of normal living between that region and other parts of Croatia. Croatia's democratic leadership would back this with its full authority, President Tudjman stressed, reiterating that "the establishment of the constitutional-legal order should be understood as the creation of conditions for co-existence, economic and every other development, and not revenge." The imposed evil had not sprung from an individual's needs, but from an irrational policy that cracked, Croatia's President concluded. UN's transitional administrator for eastern Croatia, General Klein, was satisfied that Croatia's President visited his citizens in Baranja, who during the April elections showed that they accepted Croatia as their country. "After the historic agreement between the Croatian Democratic Union Party and the Serb Democratic Independent Party, the voices of wisdom have prevailed", Klein said, adding that what lay ahead was to show the will to join in the reconstruction of that region. He advocated that all return to their homes, pointing out that "there is no reason for this area not to be peaceful and multi-ethnic." President Tudjman was accompanied by Croatian Parliament vice presidents Jadranka Kosor and Vladimir Seks, Croatian vice premiers Jure Radic and Ljerka Mintas-Hodak, the Croatian President's deputy chief-of- staff, Vesna Skare-Ozbolt, Croatian Government ministers Ivan Penic and Miroslav Separovic, the Croatian President's advisor for interior affairs, Ivic Pasalic, and the head of the Croatian Intelligence Service, Miroslav Tudjman. (hina) ha jn mm 021818 MET jun 97