ZAGREB, April 7 (Hina) - Professor Hrvoje Kacic, a Croatian legal expert and former chairman of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and the National Borders Commission, has said that indictments issued by the Hague war crimes
tribunal against Croats contained unjustified allegations, and called on former and present diplomats and all those who participated in the creation of the Croatian state to make their contribution to revealing the truth about the war against Croatia.
ZAGREB, April 7 (Hina) - Professor Hrvoje Kacic, a Croatian legal
expert and former chairman of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs
Committee and the National Borders Commission, has said that
indictments issued by the Hague war crimes tribunal against Croats
contained unjustified allegations, and called on former and present
diplomats and all those who participated in the creation of the
Croatian state to make their contribution to revealing the truth about
the war against Croatia.#L#
Speaking at a lecture at the Society of University Teachers in Zagreb
on Tuesday about the 1991 Hague Conference on Yugoslavia, Kacic
recalled that the then Croatian leadership had called for a peaceful
settlement to the crisis, while at the same time Serbian and Yugoslav
leaders conducted aggression.
He corroborated his claim by saying that Yugoslav People's Army (JNA)
Chief of Staff General Blagoje Adzic had issued an appeal to his
subordinates at the Military Academy in Belgrade on 5 July 1991 that
read: "Traitors should be shot on the spot without mercy or
hesitation. From now on we must use fear to subdue our enemy, which
means that you must shoot anyone opposing our actions."
Kacic stressed that Adzic had never been indicted by the Hague
tribunal on charges of command responsibility.
He went on to say that the UN Security Council had declared Bihac,
Sarajevo, Zepa, Gorazde and Tuzla safe areas in order to protect the
civilian population from attack, but UN forces were unable to protect
those people, as it turned out in the case of Srebrenica where more
than 7,000
local residents were killed. This was followed by the fall of the
UN-protected area of Zepa, also with tragic consequences, he added.
Kacic said that Operation Storm, mounted by the Croatian government in
the summer of 1995 to regain territory occupied by rebel Serbs, saved
the reputation of the UN Security Council and prevented further
expulsion and slaughter of the Muslim population in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Kacic criticised former Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic for
saying nothing about the efforts of the late President Tudjman to
prevent the war when Markovic appeared as a witness before the Hague
tribunal.
Kacic said that at the conference on Yugoslavia in 1991 Markovic
agreed with the position of officials from Belgrade despite Tudjman's
repeated efforts to obtain an agreement that would have prevented Serb
forces from advancing.
(Hina) vm