GRANIC BLAMES BELGRADE, KNIN SERBS FOR UNDERMINING PEACE PROCESS

ZAGREB, Jan 25 (Hina) - Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic today submitted a report to the House of Representatives on ending the UNPROFOR mandate in Croatia. Granic addressed the same issue in his report yesterday to the parliamentary upper house. Granic stressed that President Franjo Tudjman had made the decision to terminate the UNPROFOR mandate deeply aware of all its consequences. By reintegrating currently occupied territories, Croatia wanted to create conditions for a speedier overall economic and social development, he added. Granic reiterated the Government's estimate that UNPROFOR had failed to meet demands of the Croatian Parliament and public. UNPROFOR was blamed for failing to implement key operational provisions of the Vance plan and all relevant UN Security Council reolutions. But chief responsibility for this should not be ascribed to UNPROFOR only, Granic emphasized. He said key international factors bore their share of the blame as they failed to find solutions based on Security Council resolutions and agree on UNPROFOR's role in the peace process. The rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro and local Serb authorities in occupied Croatian areas were described as main culprits responsible for undermining the peace process. A lasting settlement could not be reached until the Yugoslav federation and local Serb authorities accepted the inevitability of reintegrating occupied areas into the legal, economic and political system of the Republic of Croatia, Granic stressed. Granic said Croatia would now concentrate on the implementation of all relevant UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions regarding the overall reintegration of occupied territories. "Croatia's fundamental interest has never been war but peace," Granic emphasized. He said Serbs in Croatia would be guaranteed cultural autonomy and the highest level of local autonomy in municipalities where they had been in the majority before the war; full respect for human and ethnic rights which could be supervised by representatives of the international community; and reintegration into the administrative and social system through reconstruction and development. Croatia was willing to continue talks on the overall normalization of Croatian-Serbian relations and relations between Croatia and Yugoslavia on the basis of mutual recognition, which would be in the interest of both countries as well as in the interest of peace in this part of Europe. (hina) mm vm 251547 MET jan 95