SELF-RULE MIGHT BE ABOLISHED - BOSNIA'S CROAT NATIONAL CONGRESS

MOSTAR, April 21 (Hina) - Bosnia's Croat National Congress (HNS) will abolish Bosnian Croat self-rule if the international community fully implements a Constitutional Court decision stating that Bosnia's three peoples are constituent throughout Bosnian territory, the HNS Presidency said in a statement on Saturday. It added it had never intended to annexe Croat-populated areas in Bosnia to Croatia, and emphasised that claims to this effect were deliberate insinuations aimed at framing Croats in Bosnia. Commenting on a comparison the international community's High Representative in Bosnia made by equating the HNS with a self- proclaimed Serb republic in Croatia in the early 1990s, the HNS Presidency said it was an attempt to cover up the "uncivilised and undemocratic steps taken against Croats in Bosnia. The HNS accused High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch of turning Croats in Bosnia into a national community by denying them their status of a people equally constituent as the Serbs and the Muslims. "The transitional Croat self-rule is not a parallel authority in Bosnia," the statement says, stressing the HNS was established to point to the inequality suffered by the Bosnian Croat people and as a desire to "return the implementation of the Dayton peace accords within constitutional frameworks." The statement says the HNS does not demand any exclusive rights or a separate administrative and territorial unit, but the same rights as enjoyed by the other two constituent peoples. (hina) ha