PRESIDENT TUDJMAN RETURNS TO ZAGREB (2)

"Twenty seven years ago, I wrote about great ideas and small peoples and spoke about the fact that the overall historical experience conveyed that every great idea was taken by those who wanted to impose themselves on the world, who wanted to rule over certain areas in the interest of certain powers. In the present conditions, European powers are selling us such ideas for their interests, in order to ensure their spheres of influence here. This also goes for overseas countries. It used to be the same with cosmopolitan and universalistic ideas since the antic era, and great Christian ideas, ideas of civil liberalism, to socialist internationalism. Those who were not capable of influencing the resolution of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia or in Bosnia, and who are not capable of resolving issues of minorities, ethnic minorities, racial and social issues, nor issues of international relations in their own countries in Europe or America, are today selling delusions in the name of these great ideas to us who have lived through everything to realize our freedom, our sovereignty, human rights for the Croatian people and the right to the freedom of the media. "Thus, I call on the Croatian public to think about everything and not to let themselves be deceived. I am convinced that it will be precisely these notions that will become more and more prominent and thus, my dear co-citizens who expressed concern for me, you do not have to be worried, destiny is in your, our hands, our own Croatian hands," Tudjman said. "The events of the past several days in Zagreb can also be indicative. Why did this happen at this moment? Still, I have already said once what the crux of the Zagreb crisis is. The Zagreb crisis will be resolved when sensible people in the opposition realize that the Zagreb crisis has not been caused by chance, but was meant to destabilize, in Zagreb and then in the whole of Croatia, the current democratic Croatian authority which ensured the independence of Croatian democracy. The history of democracy does not record a case which happened in Zagreb where the extreme right and the extreme left allied against the party which won a brilliant victory, and which won twice as many votes as the two leading opposition parties. Thus, I believe that more and more sensible people will surface in the opposition lines who will see what the crisis was meant to achieve and who will realize that the crux of the matter is whether we will ensure that the Croatian ship would sail under its own flag, the flag of freedom and sovereignty, into European integrations, and not back to Balkan wastelands, or south-eastern European wastelands from which we emerged with great difficulty and for the price of great sufferings," Tudjman said. At the end of Saturday's short news conference, President Tudjman was asked, "A Security Council Resolution was issued about the Croatian Danubian area and you are to receive General Klein today. The public wants to know whether you will lead Croatia to Vukovar". Tudjman answered, "I shall. And in this issue I shall prove that I am a man who fulfills his promises, his given word. Croatia is calling me, Split called me when I arrived there on the Train of Freedom, displaced persons called me, the whole Croatia called me and I called the whole of Croatia and we shall arrive in Vukovar and we shall arrive at our borders on the Danube. I shall talk to general Klein about making this happen as soon as possible. I think that the meeting I held with local Serb representatives proved that among the Serb population there are those people who understand that they had been the tools for imperialistic politics and that their life is in Croatia. I think that these Serbs themselves will facilitate the introduction of the Croatian constitutional and legal system," Tudjman said. He expressed hope that the occupied area would be reintegrated into Croatia by July 15, as the Security Council Resolution stipulated that UNTAES is to remain till 15 July. "I hope that this will happen even sooner, through elections and the introduction of the Croatian legal system," Tudjman said. "All that we have accomplished guarantees that we shall arrive in Vukovar, the symbol of Croatian resistance, of the Croatian fight for freedom and for Croatian democracy, that we shall arrive at the Croatian borders on the river Danube which have been celebrated in our national anthem," President Tudjman said. (hina) lm jn 231637 MET nov 96