TWO ISRAELI OPPOSITION MPS OPPOSE TUDJMAN'S VISIT TO ISRAEL ( Editorial: --> 7641 )

( Editorial: --> 7641 ) ZAGREB/JERUSALEM, Nov 3 (Hina)- Following the news broadcast by the Israeli radio that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman might visit Israel in December, two Israeli opposition deputies have said that they submitted a proposal to the parliament that Croatian President Tudjman should not be allowed to visit Israel due to his alleged anti-Semitic stands on the Holocaust of the Jews in WW2. The Reuters and France Presse news agencies reported on Sunday from Jerusalem that a member of the Labour Party, Yossi Beilin, and a member of a small left party, Meretz Yossi Sarid, had given the proposal, and were expecting that it would be discussed at the parliament on Monday. The two MPs accused Tudjman groundlessly in their proposal and alleged that he had denied the existence of the Holocaust describing it as the "Jewish fabrication." On the occasion of signing the protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations between Croatia and Israel in New York in the early September, Croatian Ambassador to the UN, Ivan Simonovic, said that in WW2, the Croatian people's understandable and completely legitimate desire for establishing their own state was, by a combination of unfortunate historical circumstances, used and even abused by the Nazi puppet regime. Simonovic added that it was "a shame for the Croatian people that some of its members joined the Holocaust." But, he stressed, Nazism faced in Croatia the energetic armed resistance, proportionately the strongest in the occupied Croatia. The Croatian Ambassador recalled that Tudjman personally fought in WW2 on the side of the anti-Fascist coalition since the very beginning of the war. Israeli and Croatian media have several times announced the visit of President Tudjman to Israel for the end of this year of the beginning of 1998, in connection with the statements following the Budapest talks on the establishment of the full diplomatic ties between Israel and Croatia in the late August and the New York signing of the protocol in the early September. (hina) jn mš 031201 MET nov 97