CRO OFFICIALS, KLEIN VISIT DOCUMENTS ISSUING OFFICES IN BARANJA

MECE, March 5 (Hina) - Croatian President's deputy chief-of-staff, Vesna Skare-Ozbolt, the head of the Croatian Government's office for the area under the UN Transitional Administration, Ivica Vrkic, and UN Transitional Administrator General J.P Klein, on Wednesday toured Croatian documents issuing offices in Baranja. After the visit to offices in Beli Manastir, Ceminac, Lug and Darda as well as to the INA (Croatian oil company) petrol station in Bilje, Ozbolt, Vrkic and Klein held a news conference at the headquarters of the Pakistani battalion in Mece. Klein said he had noticed that people employed in issuing documents were working under difficult conditions in those offices. Over 70,000 Croatian citizenship certificates had been issued so far, and it was a lot, Klein added. If people wanted to stay here, it was time now to opt for it, to take documents, to register themselves as voters and to form their political parties, Transitional Administrator said adding that he guaranteed the elections would be fair. Vesna Skare Ozbolt said that credit should be given to people who were working in Croatian document issuing offices as well as to those who were taking Croatian document and would like to become Croatian citizens. "As the elections are coming near, it is necessary that as many people as possible take document and go to the polls," she said. "We shall do our best to enable all who want this to get documents and there is no reason for not holding elections on April 13," Skare said and added that Gen. Klein was likely to call elections for the Croatian Danubian area "after March 10." "Those will be first Croatian elections which will be conducted in the area under Croatian law since 1991," she said adding that they would be conducted in a fair and democratic way and that the Croatian state would enable everyone to be equal citizens. According to her, 76,000 Croatian citizenship certificates and 49,000 identity cards have been issued, and it is already a sufficient number for holding the elections. Ivica Vrkic said only 5 percent of applications for Croatian documents presented a problem and added this would be also solved in a short period. We saw that native Serbs (those who had lived there before 1991) did not take documents dynamically as it had been expected, Vrkic said. He stressed that thanks to UNTAES and cooperation of local political forces, prerequisites were being created so that the elections might be held and the process of the peaceful reintegration might be completed in the defined time frame. (hina) jn mš 051748 MET mar 97