CRO DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER HOLDS TALKS WITH UN COMMISSIONER FOR HUM

HUM $ AN RIGHTS ZAGREB, May 8 (Hina) - Croatian vice-premier on Wednesday held talks with the UN High Commissioner for human rights and assistant UN Secretary-General, Jose Ayal Lasso. The meeting focused on the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danubian area and the issue of missing persons. Kostovic said that he had informed Lasso about the Croatian pilot program of the return of refugees and the Amnesty Act. He expressed his wish that the Croatian associations for searching for missing persons could open their centres in eastern Slavonia. "Another issue the meeting tackled was missing persons, considering the fact that Lass is to go to Belgrade where he is to hold talks with the Yugoslav president Milosevic. We showed what the Croat side did as regards relations with Yugoslavia," Kostovic said, adding that Croatia was making preparations, together with UNTAES, for the identification of remains and was collecting the documentation on missing persons. "We stressed that we are primarily interested in humanitarian issues, to resolve the problem of missing persons," Kostovic said. Lasso said that he had had the chance to talk very openly with the highest Croatian officials about specific human rights issues. He said they had analyzed issues of the freedom of movement, cooperation with the International Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), missing persons, the need to develop programs for promoting and protecting human rights. Lasso expressed his conviction that the talks had been fertile and that his visit to Croatia would be of use to the work of his office. (hina) lm 082002 MET may 96