 |
Telephone Service Restored in Eastern Slavonia
ZAGREB, June 12 (Reuters) - Telephone links were fully restored between the last Serb-held separatist enclave in Croatia and government territory on Wednesday after a five-year break, local media reported. Jacques Klein, the U.S. diplomat heading a U.N. mission to reintegrate the Eastern Slavonia enclave into Croatia by 1997, ceremonially revived phone services with a call from Vukovar post office to the Croatian capital Zagreb.
He said telephone lines were another big step towards cementing lasting peace in the area, a focal point of the 1991
Serb minority revolt against Croatia's declaration of independence from federal Yugoslavia.
Officials attending the ceremony in the enclave included Ivica Vrkic, Croatian special envoy on Eastern Slavonia, Vladimir Stengl, Vukovar's Croatian mayor-in-exile, and Goran Hadzic, political leader of the local Serbs. Other initial steps towards reintegration have included the withdrawal or disbandment of Serb paramilitary forces in the enclave, a fertile, oil-rich plain on the Danube River border with rump Yugoslavia.
But Klein said in Belgrade on Tuesday that he would exercise an option to lengthen his mission's mandate beyond one year. "I'm trying to fine-tune a civil administration plan, and in order to do that, I've picked a target date of July 1 next year and I've got to work towards that," he said. "If you think about the education system, re-establishing government, retraining police and customs officials, currencies, elections 30 days before the end of the mandate, I think a year from July would not be an unreasonable target."
Klein may also have difficulty in ensuring both returning Croat refugees and current Serb residents get proper housing and in handling lingering militant separatism among some Serbs.
Croatian authorities have been dismayed by statements by Serb municipalities saying they expected "state-within-a-state" autonomy, despite a 1995 treaty expressly envisaging the enclave's return to Croatian government rule. U.N. officials regard the re-emergence of such hardline Serb rhetoric as local political posturing that will have no effect on the mandate.
The United Nations established the U.N. Transitional Authority in Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES) last January to head off a budding Croatian army offensive to retake the area on the heels of conquests of two other enclaves. Those campaigns drove out more than 150,000 Serbs who had lived in the regions for centuries and drew sharp Western protests, especially at a rampage of murder and arson against the few Serbs who did not flee the Croatian onslaught. Minority Serbs seized control of three pockets totalling almost a third of Croatia in 1991.
The original UNTAES mandate was for one year with an option for a second at the request of either the Serbs or Croats.
Leaders of the roughly 150,000 Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, a third or more of whom are refugees from reconquered enclaves, have already requested an extension of the mandate.
|
Berserkistan, May 7 · Team Berserkistan First Across Yugoslav Confrontation Line
Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
©1995-1996, All Rights Reserved