GENEVA MEETING ON REFUGEES FROM EX-YUGOSLAVIA TO START TOMORROW

GENEVA, March 18 (Hina) - A three-day meeting on refugees and displaced persons in the former Yugoslavia, will commence in Geneva on Wednesday. The aim of the meeting, which is organised by the UN High Commissioners for Refugees (UNHCR) and in which delegations of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina's both entities and Yugoslavia (FRY) will participate, is to adjust national plans and a UNHCR regional plan for the return and permanent accommodation of displaced persons and refugees. In connection with Croatian refugees, the UNHCR maintains that this organisation should gradually cease carrying out its activities in Croatia in next two years. According to some estimates, by the end of 1998, only several thousand cases will remain unsolved in Croatia, whereas current 160,000 refugees from Bosnia and 198,000 Croatian displaced persons will have found permanent accommodation by that time frame. During that period about 33,000 Croatian Serbs are expected to return from the area of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), whereas about 77,000 Croatians will have come back to eastern Slavonia and another 60,000 will have returned to former (UN) sectors North and South (Croatian areas liberated in 1995). However, problems crop up with more than 300,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia who have been situated in Germany and other European countries. In this regard, representatives of those countries, who have been invited to the meeting, are expected to exert strong pressure so that the return of refugees might be speedy, due to a recession in western Europe. Croatian officials at the Geneva session are the former and the current heads of the Croatian Government's refugee offices, Damir Zoric and Lovre Pejkovic respectively, and Croatian Ambassador in Geneva, Darko Bekic. (hina) jn mš 181744 MET mar 97