$ TUDJMAN STRASBOURG, 11 Oct (Hina) - The importance of the Council of Europe's summit for Croatia lies primarily in the fact that Croatia attended the summit for the first time as its full member, but also in the fact that bilateral
meetings have pointed out respect for the international position and consistency of Croatia's policy towards current questions concerning the peace process and the Bosnian crisis, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman told Croatian reporters at the end of the second summit of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg Saturday.
-
$ TUDJMAN
STRASBOURG, 11 Oct (Hina) - The importance of the Council of
Europe's summit for Croatia lies primarily in the fact that Croatia
attended the summit for the first time as its full member, but also
in the fact that bilateral meetings have pointed out respect for the
international position and consistency of Croatia's policy towards
current questions concerning the peace process and the Bosnian
crisis, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman told Croatian reporters at
the end of the second summit of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg
Saturday. #L#
During his stay in Strasbourg, President Tudjman held talks
with the French President Chirac, Austria's President Klestil, the
Finnish President Ahtisaari, Spain's Premier Aznar, Denmark's
Premier Rasmussen, the President of the Council of Europe
Parliamentary Assembly, Leni Fischer, and the Council of Europe
Secretary General, Daniel Tarschys.
President Tudjman also met with a Bosnian Presidency member
Kresimir Zubak and Bosnia's Foreign Minister Jadranko Prlic.
The talks in Strasbourg stressed the realisation about the
constructiveness of Croatia's policy, which cares about its own
national interests but also about the interests of its partners in
the international community, particularly the European Union and the
United States, President Tudjman said.
"We have overcome most of our misunderstandings with the
United States, which manifested themselves in the recent pressure.
We have accomplished that exactly on the basis of the consistency
and constructiveness of our policy which resulted in respect for
Croatian standpoints," Tudjman said adding that the standpoints of
European factors and the U.S. had become harmonised as regards the
fact that the Bosnian crisis can be solved successfully only within
the framework of consistent implementation of the Washington and
Dayton agreements.
Speaking about the implementation of the peace agreements,
which are aimed at solving the Bosnian crisis, Tudjman recalled that
the Washington agreement spoke about confederal ties between Croatia
and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Dayton
agreement, which followed up the Washington agreement, was not that
explicit about that issue, but spoke about special relations between
the Bosnian entities with Croatia and Yugoslavia.
"In that way the Dayton agreement enabled a kind of special
interpretation which in Bosnia-Herzegovina resulted in a wish,
especially among the Muslim leadership, to interpret the Dayton
agreement as a framework for the reconstruction of a unitary Bosnia-
Herzegovina. Some international factors also entertained this idea.
That tendency obviously failed at the last elections in Bosnia-
Herzegovina," Tudjman said recalling the election crisis, which, he
said, had been solved through an intervention of Croatian
authorities, and international factors had to admit that during the
election preparations mistakes had been made to the detriment of
Bosnian Croats.
Europe and especially the United States then began to realise
that the Bosnian crisis could not be solved without strictly
complying with the Washington and Dayton agreements, Tudjman said.
Tudjman stressed that the European partners welcomed the fact
that reasons for pressure by the United States had been removed and
that prerequisites for further development of partnership and
friendly relations between the U.S. and Croatia had been created.
Tudjman also commented on some claims according to which
Croatia had given in to international pressure when it transferred
ten Bosnian Croat war crimes indictees to the Hague Tribunal.
Tudjman said that Croatia had been guided by humane motives in
mediating the surrender of the indicted Bosnian Croats to the Hague
Tribunal. Considering the fact that they had been indicted for war
crimes and that the international community had announced to take
action aimed at bringing them before the Tribunal, those people had
lived under difficult psychological conditions, he said.
"We have been given guarantees that the trial will start
within a short period and that it will be fair as well as that those
indicted for war crimes committed against the Croat population will
be brought before the Tribunal, which we have been demanding since
the beginning of the Dayton agreement, and that all of this be done
in such a way so as to provide objective work of the Tribunal,"
Tudjman said adding the guarantees had greater political importance.
Croatia was given guarantees that the mandate of the U.N.
Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES) would be
completed within the planned deadline, by 15 January 1998.
Asked to comment on the establishment of a European tribunal
for human rights, which was agreed upon at the summit, Tudjman said
that such an idea could help in the promotion of human rights
protection, but not through an anarchist approach to the problem,
but rather by securing democratic rights of citizens, who would be
able to turn to the tribunal after they have used all legal means in
their respective countries.
Tudjman also commented on a trilateral agreement between
France, Germany and Russia which agreed in Strasbourg to hold
trilateral summits once a year.
He said he could stress a speech by the French Premier Lionel
Jospin who said that Europe had to be a factor in the establishment
of international balance. I think the trilateral agreement is
important in that sense, Tudjman said.
(hina) jn rm
111710 MET oct 97