CROATIAN GOVT. DISAPPOINTED WITH PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT

ZAGREB, Sept 19 (Hina) - The Croatian Government's first reaction to (Thursday's) presidential statement of the UN Security Council has been disappointment, Croatian Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa has said. On Friday, Matesa described the Security Council statement as completely inappropriate to the real progress in the reintegration of the Croatian Danube river area. If there were an objective approach it would certainly show that in line with the Letter of Intent, Croatia had done much more than the presidential statement had admitted, Matesa said at a press briefing in Zagreb. Declining to say which factors influenced such a presidential statement, he reiterated that the Croatian Government had fulfilled, to the largest extent, all elements from the Letter of Intent. According to him, issues of the health service have been solved considerably, schools are working with no big problems, in the judiciary a solution that has been proposed is in line with the agreement between the UNTAES (UN Transitional Area for eastern Slavonia), the Croatian Justice Ministry and local Serbs' requests. The problem of the two-way return should worry Croatia more than UNTAES or the international community, Matesa said. "A disproportion between the number of Serbs who have returned to other parts of Croatia and the number of Croatian returnees in the Danube area is such that we are more concerned about that than that the international community is," the prime minister told reporters. Croatia "is particularly sensitive to some kind of silent setting of double standards as regards (the return of) the displaced and refugees, because some international representatives and some ambassadors in Croatia are persistently ignoring the problem of the return of Croats to the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially to the Republic of Srpska, and to the Croatian Danube river area," Matesa said. In one case one standard is applied, but another standard is applied when Croats are in question, he added. "I maintain personally that such state of mind and such way of notifying the international community has contributed a lot to the lack of understanding of the situation in the Croatian Danube area," he said. Croatia would stick to everything it had signed in the Letter of Intent, and under conditions that may not always be simple, it would consistently and persistently implement the Letter of Intent, he added. The Premier announced a thematic session on the reintegration of the Danube area for Monday when ministries should submit reports on what they had done. The Government will consider a programme for building confidence as the second step in pursuing the entire policy it has begun with the Letter of Intent. This we would do for ourselves, as the fundamental Croatian interest was a success of the reintegration of the area, he added. The Government would promote and demand the protection of rights of the Croatian displaced and refugees, not only of those from the Danube area but also of Croats expelled from Bosnian two entities, for whom the international community had not cared so far neither did it show the wish to help them to return Matesa told reports. That's why the Government would exert at least such pressure on the international community as it was exerted on Croatia, he said. (hina) jn mš 191513 MET sep 97