Croatia must boost efforts on Serb refugees: OSCE

B92/REUTERS
April 28, 2004

ZAGREB -- Wednesday - Despite good grades so far from Brussels, Croatia must do more to bring back Serb refugees and restore their rights to keep its bid for European Union membership on track, a European rights envoy said on Wednesday.

"The game is not over, it has just started," said Peter Semneby, head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) international human rights watchdog in Croatia.

"The next step is the European Council decision and there will be several control stations along the way," Semneby told Reuters in an interview.

The EU's executive Commission said last week Croatia had met political and economic conditions for starting entry talks. Zagreb expects to become a formal candidate at an EU summit in June and hopes to start talks late this year or in early 2005.

Croatia wants to join in 2007, but EU officials say it will probably have to wait until 2009.

Key issues include the return of Serb refugees from Croatia's 1991-95 war of independence from Yugoslavia, some 200,000 of whom now live in neighbouring Serbia and Bosnia, and better conditions for those who have already come back. Also required is a long-awaited law on regulating electronic media.

Problems requiring longer-term work are minority rights and the reform of the judiciary, facing a backlog of more than 1.5 million cases.

"All those issues will only go away when they are resolved, not by themselves. The risk of complacency (after the opinion by the Commission) should not be underestimated. Everyone must be aware that constant profound efforts are necessary," he said.

Semneby praised the new government for "breaking a number of old taboos" by engaging in dialogue with the Serb minority, previously ostracised as the main culprits for the war. But for most Serb refugees this came too late, he said.

"Unfortunately, so much time has elapsed. It is clear now that the vast majority of refugees will stay where they are. It is tragic that most refugees would find another move too burdensome by now, too much trouble."

"But the bottom line is to provide reasonable conditions for all those who do want to return," he said, adding that surveys put them at between 15 and 35 percent of the total number.

He urged the government to allow Serbs who did not manage to buy out their flats at a discount by a 1996 deadline to be given access to state-subsidised housing, as the previous cabinet decided. OSCE estimates point to more than 24,000 such cases.

The government has also undertaken to return more than 3,000 houses, now occupied by Bosnian Croats with Croatian citizenship, to their pre-war Serb owners.

"With all this in mind, I am reasonably optimistic that we will move forward," Semneby said.