BOSNIAN SERBS RELEASE ONLY FOUR CROAT POWS

KUPRES, 1 April (Hina) - The Bosnian Serbs on Monday released only four out of 34 Croat prisoners of war, contrary to the agreement between the President of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina Kresimir Zubak and a Bosnian Serb representative Aleksa Buha. The Serbs arrived in Blagaj, near Kupres (southwestern Bosnia) with ten Croat POWs, but even after five and a half hours of talks, they did not agree to release all of them and but took six prisoners back to Banja Luka. The head of the Herzeg-Bosnian Government Department for the exchange of POWs, Berislav Pusic, said that the rest of the prisoners would be handed over in Davor, Croatia on April 2, at 2 pm. Croatian pilot Rudolf Perisin (whose plane had been shot down near Bosanska Gradiska in Operation 'Flash' - liberation of western Slavonia) had also been included in the exchange, but there were little details about him, Pusic said, adding that pilot Vladimir Sumanovac, on whose release it has been negotiated with the Serbs since 1993, was in the bus with other POWs today, but was not released. The Serb side said he would be released in Davor. The Croats had respected regulations of the Dayton peace agreement and released 177 Serb POWs, but the Serbs had not released a single Croat prisoner at the same time, Pusic said. One of the four prisoners released today, Dubravko Bracic (aged 22, from Zagreb) who had been imprisoned on 6 August 1995 in Dvor na Uni, said he had been in prisons in Doboj, Kotorsko and Banja Luka. Bracic added he would remember longest the tortures he was exposed to in the Banja Luka military investigation prison. In bad physical condition and exhausted, refusing to speak further of the time he spent in Serb prisons, Bracic said that his arm and three ribs were broken. Bracic said that the POWs had been taken to forced labour without food. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had helped prisoners very little, Bracic added. (hina) rm jn 012153 MET apr 96