GERMAN CORRESPONDENTS VISIT VUKOVAR

VUKOVAR, Sept 29 (Hina) - Journalists of about twenty German papers and magazines, visiting eastern Croatia in organisation of the Croatian Embassy in Bonn, on Monday toured Vukovar, a Croatian town under the UN Transitional Administration (UNTAES), where they met Vukovar Mayor Vladimir Stengl, an MP, Count Jakob Eltz Vukovarski, who is the owner of the damaged castle Eltz, an MP and the Serb Democratic Independent Party (SDSS), Vojislav Stanimirovic, the head of the joint council of the (Serb) municipalities, Milos Vojnovic, and UNTAES officials. In front of the damaged castle Eltz, Count Eltz Vukovarski and Mayor Stengl notified correspondents of the history and devastation of this eastern Croatian town and of the current peaceful reintegration of the area. Serb representatives Stanimirovic and Vojnovic spoke of the process of the reintegration at a news conference. Asked by a free-lance journalist, Annette Blettner, about the Serb crime, as she said, at Ovcara (a mass grave site outside Vukovar), Stanimirovic replied that the journalist "does not understand the situation" and added that she "is tendentious and blames (Serbs)". Stanimirovic said he insisted on punishment of perpetrators and claimed that Vukovar hospital (from where about 200 patients were taken to Ovcara and killed after the fall of the town into hands of Yugoslav conquerors ad Serb rebels) was the last "bastion of army forces" and added that it was not the same whether soldiers or civilians had been killed and whether they had been healthy or sick. A UNTAES spokesman, Philip Arnold, told Germans that the peaceful reintegration was approaching an exceptionally important and difficult stage of the return of refugees and dislocated people. He told them that the UN spent about 500 million US dollars into the reintegration process. He stressed that the Croatian sovereignty in the Croatia Danube area was unquestionable. Croatian Ambassador to Germany, Zoran Jasic, who was also in Vukovar, said that it was the time to correct frequently the wrong writing of foreign media about Croatia. Asked by Hina to tell her impressions from the visit to Croatia, a journalist of the famous weekly "Focus", Gudrun Dometelt, said that she was shocked by proportions of devastation of Vukovar, although she had known what had happened in Croatia in 1991. (hina) jn mš 292020 MET sep 97