TWO MISSING PERSONS ORGANIZATIONS TURN TO U.N. CHIEF FOR HELP

ZAGREB, Dec 20 (Hina) - The Croatian associations of families of missing persons, "Apel" and "The Croatian Mother" on Friday urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to contribute to the resolution of the problem of missing persons and obtain the release of all persons in detention since the beginning of military aggression against Croatia. Recalling Annan's meetings with the families of detainees at UN headquarters in New York and Zagreb in 1993, the two organizations stressed in a joint letter that the problem of missing persons had not been resolved to date and that their families still did not know about the fate of more than 2,500 persons that had been detained or taken away by force. "Apel" and "The Croatian Mother" noted that documentation on missing persons was possessed by the UN Human Rights Centre in Geneva. Convinced that the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, and the Yugoslav army in particular, had complete documentation on detained and missing persons, they asked Annan to use his influence so that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would take a stand on the fate of all detained and missing Croatian citizens, and to bring about their release. (hina) vm mm 201922 MET dec 96