CROATIA & UNHCR ALREADY WORKING ON SERB RETURN PROGRAMME

( Editorial: --> 4182 ) ZAGREB, May 15 (Hina) - Croatia is already working on an operational programme for the return of Croatian Serb refugees in cooperation with the UNHCR, organisation spokesman Andrej Mahecic told Hina Friday. "There is good progress in that field," Mahecic emphasised. The Croatian Government yesterday adopted binding instructions for issuing documents for the application of the Procedure for the Individual Return of Persons Who Left the Republic of Croatia. With these instructions, the government has greatly simplified the granting of Croatian citizenship to Serbs who left Croatia, and terminated a conflict with the international community on the matter. The Croatian Government simultaneously established a working group in charge of drafting a programme for the return of all Serb refugees and Croatian displaced persons. The group has 30 days to draft the programme in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR and the Government's Office for Displaced Persons and Refugees did not wait for the final procedure for the refugee return to Croatia to be passed. They have been working on the return programme for six weeks. The programme must provide operational solutions to a string of concrete issues, such as the return's pace, accommodation and reconstruction. The exact number of Serb refugees or how many wish to return to Croatia is however unknown. The UNHCR estimates that some 300,000 Croatian Serbs took refuge in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and some 35,000 in the Bosnian Serb entity. Quoting Yugoslav authorities, Croatia claims that 28,000 Serbs from Yugoslavia and 3,500 from the Bosnian Serb entity want to return to Croatia. In an attempt to access precise data and find out how many want to return, the UNHCR has been conducting a survey among Croatian Serb refugees in Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serb entity. "Currently there are (less than 10,000) Croatian Serbs who expressed the wish to return to Croatia", the UNHCR spokesman told Hina. The UNHCR is working on a regional refugee return plan which will be put forward at a Peace Implementation Council conference in Paris this June. The plan for Croatia is part of this wider return plan, which covers several countries in the region. Croatia has already announced it would now fight for more consistent financial assistance from the international community, necessary for implementing the return programme. This assistance has been withheld so far and Croatia expects that a donors' conference for the country's reconstruction will take place in September. Using financial assistance as a more effective means of pressure on Croatia, the international community postponed the conference from March to April, then May and finally "until further notice". "Of course this is some sort of business," a spokesman of the Croatian Ministry for Reconstruction and Development, Vladimir Loncevic, said speaking about the assistance game between Croatia and international community. Croatia has already drafted reconstruction programmes worth US$3 billion, but it is up to the international community whether or what it will accept. (hina) ha /mrb 151746 MET may 98