FAMILIES OF VUKOVAR MISSING RESIDENTS DEPLORE STANIMIROVIC'S STATEMENT

STATEMENT $ ZAGREB, Oct 2 (Hina) - Families of Vukovar's missing citizens and defenders, have severely condemned Vojislav Stanimirovic's recent statement at a news conference with German journalists concerning patients of the city's hospital who were taken from it by Serb rebels and the then Yugoslav Army and killed at Ovcara mass grave site in the wake of the 1991 fall of that eastern Croatian city. Asked by a German reporter at the conference about the Serb crime, as she said, at Ovcara where 200 wounded treated at Vukovar hospital had been killed, a Croatian Serb leader, Dr. Stanimirovic, replied that "the journalist does not understand the situation," and accused her of being "tendentious and blaming (Serbs)". He also claimed that the Vukovar hospital 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. Four societies of missing Vukovar citizens were, in particular, outraged by Stanimirovic's claim in which he said that "we know what happened with people from the hospital, and they are not patients but some other people." The families cited him as saying this in their statement published on Thursday, and demanded that Stanimirovic, who was named to a member of the Croatian parliament as a representative of Serbs from the UN-administered Croatian area in line with the Croatian Government's Letter of Intent, should leave the post of MP. They added that out of 200 exhumed bodies from the Ovcara mass grave, only 100 were identified until now. "Didn't Stanimirovic take part in the massacre at Ovcara, because he knows who the killed are. We do not know. Only about a hundred people (from the mass grave) have been identified so far. (...) Why doesn't he help us? He knows," read the statement of the Vukovar mothers association, the Vukovar widows association, the Croatian society of Serb concentration camps' prisoners and the Croatian defenders association. (hina) jn mš 021938 MET oct 97