CROATIAN PRESIDENT TUDJMAN'S SPEECH IN GOSPIC

GOSPIC, April 8 (Hina) - Croatian President and the leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, Franjo Tudjman, rendered a speech in Gospic today at the occasion of marking the fifth anniversary of the HDZ branch in Gospic. President Tudjman said that in the struggle for the preservance of the Croatian people and the establishment of the independent and sovereign Croatian State the area of Lika assumed a special significance because of its sacrifice, victims and its particular position. President Tudjman added that he used the example of the history of Lika and its people's struggle perhaps even more than other examples for devising the programme of the HDZ and the establishment of the independent and sovereign Croatia. The whole of Lika fought for the preserving of Croatia against dictatorship of the unitary, centralist Yugoslavia and a Greater Serbia, he said adding that Lika could be followed in endeavours to unite all who held different ideas and had stood under different flags while fighting for Croatia. President Tudjman said the international community had not wanted to have an independent Croatia after the victory of the anti-Fascist coalition, and it did not want such a Croatia after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. We had to create the independent Croatia setting our hearts on it and using our brains, as well as using both arms and policies in order to achieve the international recognition, and, thus, to be an internationally acknowledged factor today, he said. Speaking of the cancellation of the UNPROFOR mandate, President Tudjman said Croatia had agreed to a new deal on the presence of international forces in Croatia so that it might avoid the conflict with the world that would be glad to find reasons for imposing sanctions against the country "expressing its dissatisfaction with the existence of the sovereign Croatia", he said. When we had not only accepted but also proposed that international forces could stay with a new mandate, being deployed at the international borders of Croatia and serving as monitors in the temporarily occupied areas of the peaceful reintegration into the Croatian constitutional and legal system, we bore in mind such the world and the nature of international relations, at the same time thinking that we should not have to have new victims if it was not indispensable, President Tudjman said. He said there were 12,000 killed and missing persons, and 35,000 wounded and invalids in Croatia. "We have told Serbs as well as the world that in the event that the peaceful reintegration should not be achieved, Croatia is resolute and has the strength to liberate its areas by force if necessary," he emphasized. President Tudjman pointed out the importance of the Washington Accords that guarantee the Croat-Moslem Federation of Bosnia- Herzegovina and its confederation with Croatia in the way that Croatian interest in Bosnia as well as the strategic interests of the Croatian State might be protected. President Tudjman appealed to citizens of Lika for calling on their relatives and countrymen, spread all over the world, to return to their homeland and to invest into Croatia, because "Croatia is a country of happiness and prosperity, which we shall build in the interest of the Croatian citizens," he said. (hina) mm mms 081931 MET apr 95