AUSTRIAN ARCHDUCHESS PRESENTS ARCH FOUNDATION

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Hina) - Austrian Archduchess Francesca von Habsburg presented in New York on Monday the ARCH Foundation for the restoration of art works and cultural heritage in Central and East Europe, which is restoring numerous medieval paintings and sculptures in Dubrovnik. The organisation was founded in 1991 by Francesca von Habsburg in response to Serb destruction of the Croatian cultural heritage. In her lecture in the National Press Club she said she believed the systematic and constant policy of the Serb nationalist army was to demoralize and destroy all traces of the Croatian people and to carry out a cultural genocide. This should be considered as a war crime, she said. She also stressed that five million works of art had been relocated during the aggression. In 1992 the foundation started a programme to train restorer and today it was the only one involved in the restoration business in this area. The wish of the foundation was to return, after the restoration was finished, all works of art to the churches they had been taken from, because they belonged to local communities and not to galleries and museums, she said. Currently the foundation was working on the restoration of several medieval works of art from Dubrovnik, and it was faced with financial problems. The Austrian government donated $100,000 to the foundation and the restoration of some works of art was financed by the family of Franceska von Habsburg. The fact that the restoration of one frame for the painting cost $12,000 spoke enough of how expensive the process was, she said. The lecture saw slides of the destruction of Croatia's cultural heritage, as well as about dozens of works of art which were or are being restored by the foundation. Von Habsburg said the destruction of cultural heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not given enough attention. Everything had been destroyed in this country, from archeological finds to medieval works of art. Graveyards, as signs of a centennial interweaving of cultures, were systematically destroyed. Many Moslem, Catholic and Jewish graveyards were destroyed in such a way, von Habsburg said. (hina) mm rm vm 161158 MET may 95