CROATIA REQUESTS AID FROM E.U. FOR QUAKE-HIT AREA

ZAGREB, Sept 9 (Hina) - Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic wrote to senior EU officials on Monday, informing them about the disastrous consequences of a strong earthquake that struck the Dubrovnik area of southern Croatia late last Thursday and requesting urgent financial aid for the quake-hit area. In letters to the president of the EU Council of Ministers, Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring, and a member of the European Commission, Hans van den Broek, Granic said that the results of the reconstruction process in the area, which had earlier been destroyed in Serbian aggression against Croatia, had been annulled by the earthquake and that the process would have to start from the beginning, a Foreign Ministry statement said. Croatia's ambassador to UNESCO, Vesna Girardi-Jurkic, informed the director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Bernd von Droste, of the consequences of the earthquake. (hina) vm 091825 MET sep 96