GRUJIC SPEAKS ABOUT TRACING MISSING, IMPRISONED PERSONS

OSIJEK, Sept 26 (Hina) - Exhumations in the Danube river region of eastern Croatia will continue in places which have been cleared of mines and where free access is possible, and in cooperation with UNTAES, the president of the Croatian government's commission for imprisoned and missing persons, Lt. Col. Ivan Grujic, told a meeting of the Osijek-based association of families of missing and imprisoned Croatian defenders on Friday. Officials of UNTAES and the International Red Cross Committee were also in attendance. Grujic said the remains of 1,406 persons have been exhumed in Croatia to date, of whom 506 were from a list of persons missing, imprisoned or led away by force. The remains of 370 persons have been exhumed in the Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar- Srijem Counties of eastern Croatia, of whom 125 were on the said list, he added. Grujic refuted allegations about insufficient exhumation teams and technical equipment, as well as about inexpertness of forensic experts who identify the exhumed bodies. "Certain results have been achieved in the tracing of imprisoned and missing persons, but not of the kind we would like", Grujic said, and recalled that in Croatia more than 2,200 such persons, of whom 233 in the Osijek-Baranja County, were still searched for. The government's commission was continuing communication with a Yugoslav commission for missing and imprisoned persons and representatives of Bosnian Serbs and Serbs in the Croatian Danube region in order to uncover the truth about all missing persons, Grujic concluded. (hina) ha 261923 MET sep 97