CROATIAN WORKING GROUP AND VENICE COMMISSION MEET IN ZAGREB

ZAGREB, March 26 (Hina) - The Croatian parliamentary working group for revising the constitutional law on human and minority rights and experts of the Council of Europe's Venice Commission met in Zagreb on Wednesday to discuss the revision of suspended provisions of the constitutional law on national minorities in Croatia. The aim of the meeting was to harmonize solutions regarding the suspended provisions of that law, Croatian Parliament vice- president Vladimir Seks and Turkish representative on the commission Ergun Oezbudun told reporters after the meeting. Two provisions of the constitutional law - one regulating the special status of districts where an ethnic minority constituted a majority population according to the 1991 census and the other stipulating that the members of ethnic minorities which make up more than eight percent of Croatia's population have the right to participate in high government bodies - were suspended in the autumn of 1995. Oezbudun said that in revising those provisions, the European Convention on Local Government and article 11 of Recommendation 1201 of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly should be taken into account. Under article 11, members of a national minority representing a majority in a certain area should have the right to participate in local or autonomous authorities or should be given a special status according to the historical and territorial status and in conformity with the national legislation of the state. In March 1996, the Venice group adopted an Opinion that every state has a wide selection of possibilities to fulfil the obligations from article 11 since it does not prescribe a specific model of local government. Our visit to Croatia is a further step towards the realization of the Opinion of the Venice Commission, Oezbudun said. "Croatia believes, and the experts of the Venice Commission have agreed with it, that the basis for lifting the suspension of the provisions of the constitutional law or for their revision, is the completion of the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube region, in order to stabilize the demographic picture," Seks said. After that a population census should be conducted "to determine the number and percentage of the members of national and ethnic minorities," he added. Finally, the opinion of minority representatives would be taken into account in the operationalization of article 11. "We have agreed to meet again within a month and in the meantime to examine the views of representatives of all national minorities and groups in Croatia on whether those provisions of the constitutional law should be restored to life or should be abolished," Seks stressed. Seks said that the Croatian parliament was currently bringing the laws into accord with European standards. Smiljko Sokol, deputy chairman of the parliamentary Committee for the Cconstitution and Political System, said that Croatian standards on minorities were not only in conformity with European conventions and charters but that they went beyond them. This was the first meeting between the Venice Commission and the Croatian parliamentary working group, established in October last year. Croatia pledged its commitment to cooperating with the Venice Commission by signing a list of 21 demands by the Council of Europe in March 1996. (hina) vm jn 261903 MET mar 97