ZAGREB, April 7 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO), Zarko Puhovski, said on Wednesday that the war crimes reported by the HHO had been committed after a meeting between General Ante Gotovina
and military commanders in Knin on 6 August 1995, at which the general drew attention to certain negative occurrences and called for stricter discipline.
ZAGREB, April 7 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee
for Human Rights (HHO), Zarko Puhovski, said on Wednesday that the war
crimes reported by the HHO had been committed after a meeting between
General Ante Gotovina and military commanders in Knin on 6 August
1995, at which the general drew attention to certain negative
occurrences and called for stricter discipline.#L#
Puhovski was asked by reporters in the Croatian parliament to comment
on video footage of the meeting, which has up until now been
considered missing. The video tape has been obtained by the Globus
weekly, and the Nova television network showed parts of it in its
prime-time news programme on Tuesday evening.
Puhovski said that the emergence of the tape raised the issue of "who
in this country actually controls documents and how is it possible
that documents of great national importance appear or disappear
according to political needs without being listed or under
supervision?"
He said that based on the tape and other data, the Hague tribunal's
office of the prosecutor should change the indictment against
Gotovina, who has claimed that on the dates referred to in the
indictment he was not in the Knin area, but was with his units on the
Bosnian border or even in Bosnia.
Puhovski said he believed the video tape of the meeting would make the
position of some of the Hague tribunal indictees easier, but that it
would make more difficult the defence of those responsible for the
restoration of order in liberated areas after Operation Storm.
He said he had not seen the footage, but only read its transcript in
the latest issue of Globus.
In its Wednesday issue, the Zagreb-based weekly published the content
of the video footage of the meeting at which Gotovina strongly
criticised Croatian military commanders for the chaos that had
occurred and called for discipline to be imposed in the
newly-liberated territory, warning that victorious celebrations should
not be allowed to turn into plunder and rampage.
(Hina) vm