CRO PARLIAMENT DELEGATION LAYS WREATHS IN BREZOVICA

BREZOVICA, June 22 (Hina) - Croatia's Antifascist Struggle Day was celebrated in the Brezovica wood near Sisak (about 40 km south east of Zagreb) on Sunday with the laying of wreaths by the monument to Sisak's first partisan unit, the first antifascist unit to be formed in WW2 Europe, on 22 June 1941 in the Brezovica wood. The wreaths were laid by a Croatian Parliament delegation headed by Janko Bobetko, a retired staff general who was a member of Sisak's first partisan unit and is currently the head of the Croatian Parliament Lower House's War Veterans Committee. Bobetko pointed out that on 22 June 1941 a group of Croatian antifascists from Sisak decided to form its unit to fight fascism and to fight for a free Croatia. The Croatian people can be proud of its participation in the antifascist struggle, Bobetko said, pointing out it was a respectable antifascist struggle and tradition that put Croatia and the Croatian people into the victorious antifascist coalition and on the victorious side in WW2, which provided conditions for the creation of the present day independent, internationally recognized Croatian state. The representatives of the Croatian state and local authorities gathered here today to pay due respect to all those who in Sisak and Croatia died for humanity, love of freedom and the Croatian homeland, Bobetko stressed. He added that Sisak had always defended Croatia, and that today's gathering also paid respect to the town's inhabitants who died for their hometown and their country, ever since battles against the Turks, the formation of the first antifascist unit in WW2, up to the formation of one of the first voluntary battalions in Croatia in 1991, and the great contribution of Sisak and its residents to the creation, defense and preservation of the Croatian state. Wreaths by the Brezovica monument were today also laid by delegations of the Sisak-Moslavina County, the Town of Sisak, the Croatian Antifascist War Veterans Association headed by its president Ivan Fumic, and other associations. (hina) ha 221554 MET jun 97