CROATIAN CULTURE MINISTER TO OPEN EXHIBITION IN PARIS

PARIS, Sept 2 (Hina) - Croatian Culture Minister Bozo Biskupic arrived in Paris on Tuesday where he is to open the "From Dove to Peace" exhibition at the UNESCO palais on Wednesday. HE is also to meet representatives of the French Culture Ministry. The exhibition is to present the cultural heritage if Vukovar, Ilok, Vinkovci and Osijek and represented the completion of the peaceful reintegration eastern Slavonia. Croatian Ambassador to the UNESCO, Vesna Girardi-Jurkic on Tuesday organised a reception at which were present Biskupic, Croatian Parliament Deputy-President Zarko Domljan, Biskupic's assistant Branka Sulc, Osijek Mayor Zlatko Kramaric, Foreign Ministry representatives and other officials. Girardi-Jurkic said that the exhibition was to show to all 186 members of the UNESCO, as well as the diplomatic corps and the world public, that Croatia was a country with a thousand-year-old culture and civilisation in eastern Slavonia, notwithstanding the peoples and religions which had lived in the region. After Paris, the exhibition is to be presented in Portugal, Belgium and the United States. Biskupic stressed that his talks at UNESCO would focus on Croatia's activities in the protection and reconstruction of the war-damaged cultural heritage, as well as on the help of UNESCO and other international organisations with the reconstruction of the heritage. (hina) lm 022221 MET sep 97