CROATIA MARKS FALL OF VUKOVAR WITH WREATH-LAYING CEREMONIES

ZAGREB, Nov 18 (Hina) - Croatia's senior government and military officials and the exiled authorities, displaced people and families of missing persons from Vukovar laid wreaths in Zagreb's Mirogoj Cemetery on Monday marking the fifth anniversary of the fall of the eastern Croatian town to Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary forces. During three months of fighting in 1991, JNA's heavy artillery razed to the ground the besieged town; the old baroque city nucleus, churches, museum, the house in which the Nobel Prize winner Lavoslav Ruzicka was born, the library with 90,000 volumes, the Bauer collection of paintings, three grammar and six primary schools, four cemeteries and about 90% of all other buidlings simply disappeared in explosions and flames. On November 19/20 1991, the JNA and Serbian paramilitary troops finally entered Vukovar and immediately started with killings, deportations and forced displacement of its inhabitants. So the old town of Vukovar, inhabited by about 45,000 people, simply disappeared. (Data compiled from Mass Killing and Genocide in Croatia 1991/92: A Book of Evidence, Zagreb 1992). Before international monitoring missions were allowed into the town, JNA troops had taken the wounded from Vukovar hospital to the Ovcara pig farm, about six km east of the town, where they executed and buried them in a mass grave. Experts of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) exhumed the bodies last month. "The bodies recovered from the Ovcara mass grave site are those of men taken from Vukovar hospital on 20 November 1991," ICTY investigator Clint Williamson said in Zagreb in October. Williamson said that all identified bodies were male and that they ranged in age from teenagers to people in their sixties. All 200 bodies retrieved from the grave had civilian clothes on, he added. ICTY investigators did not know what had happened to other patients from Vukovar hospital. According to some data, 261 patients were in hospital before the fall of the town. The fates of about 2,500 missing persons are still not known. The Hague tribunal has indicted three JNA commander for war crimes in Vukovar and demands that Yugoslavia extradite them. Vukovar, as well as the entire Serb-held Danube river region of eastern Croatia, is currently under the UN transitional administration whose task is to reintegrate the region into Croatia's constitutional and administrative system until mid-July next year. According to estimates by UN and Croatian government officials, the peaceful reintegration process is proceeding at a satisfactory pace. The UN transitional administration has called on both sides to refrain from staging either celebrations or protest rallies on the day. However, the self-styled Serb authorities of Vukovar have announced for today "a celebration of the liberation of Vukovar." On Sunday Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Kostovic wrote to Klein asking him to prevent Serb extremists in their attempts. The exiled Croatian authorities of Vukovar have announced wreath-laying ceremonies and religious services across the country to mark the day. They have called on all citizens of Croatia to put lighted candles in their windows at 19.00 hours in memory of all Vukovar victims. An exhibition of paintings owned by Vukovar's Franciscan Monastery will be held in Zagreb. (hina) vm jn 181519 MET nov 96