CROATIA CONCERNED ABOUT POSITION OF CROATS IN BOSNIA

( Editorial: --> 7314 ) BONN, Dec 10 (Hina) - Croatia supports the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement but is concerned about the position of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, particularly in central Bosnia, Foreign Minister Mate Granic told a conference of the Peace Implementation Council in Bonn on Wednesday. Granic said that the number of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina was halved in comparison to their number before the war, adding that particularly worrying was the fact that an increasing number of Croats were forced by terrorist attacks and murders to leave central Bosnia. Granic stressed that post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina was not possible without Croats. "It is high time the international community paid special attention to the situation in central Bosnia, which is ignored by international media and politicians despite constant Croatian warnings." Granic said that support for the survival of Croats as the smallest of Bosnia-Herzegovina's constituent nations was one of the reasons why Croatia had proposed special relations with the Bosnian Moslem- Croat Federation. The draft of the final document of the conference equated the Croatian proposal on special relations with the Federation with a similar proposal that had been signed between the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro. The Peace Implementation Council assessed that the Croatian proposal and the inter-Serb agreement were not in conformity with the Dayton agreement and demanded they be adjusted to the peace accord. (hina) vm mm 101429 MET dec 97