COMMISSION GATHERS EVIDENCE ON 55,000 WAR CRIMES IN EX-YUGOSLAVIA

ZAGREB, April 8 (Hina) - President of the Croatian Victimological Society Zvonimir Separovic told a press conference in Zagreb on Friday that the exhumation of the Ovcara mass grave near Vukovar, scheduled to begin on April 10, was suspended owing to a lack of funds, although the war crimes commission had not brought to an end investigations into mass murders and rapes in former Yugoslavia. Separovic stressed he and Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock had sent a letter to the UN Security Council and the secretary-general urging them to secure additional funds for the commission to continue its work. He added that the commission had gathered evidence on more than 55 thousand war crimes and had made out 3 thousand cases with at least five witnesses. Separovic said the war crimes commission was preparing a report more than three thousand pages long, but that the UN administration would admit only a 50-page summary. In that way, testimonies about devastation of cultural heritage in Dubrovnik, Vukovar and Sarajevo would be left out. 081746 MET apr 94