Nachricht Nummer : 482 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 46 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 20 April, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 03.05.1994 10:51:00 S+2 Zagreb Diary 20 April, 1994 Dobar dan, The half yearly Zagreb fair is taking place at the moment and seen on the television it looks that a lot more people has visit this years issue tan in the last two years. Croatia get's for investors an interesting country since some countries around the world (like 10 million US$ for agriculture from the states) are going to lent or give money for reconstruction of the country and the economy. On next years state budget Croatia has reserved 100 million DEM for the start of the reconstruction works, in total it is estimated now that the total damage during the war in Croatia, as far as they can estimate at this moment (parts of Croatia are of course still not open to visit for the experts from the Croatian state), is somewhere between 10 and 15 billion DEM (that is 9 zero's behind the figure). Reports from the same source, the governmental office for the reconstruction of Croatia, a part of the ministry for Environment and construction (if I am right informed), further more stated that app. 500 village's or city part's have been damaged during the war and that at least 300 of them have been totally destroyed. In sector West I know at least 93 village in a circle from 15 kilometer around Pakrac,(some time's not bigger than 10 or 15 houses, sometimes around a 100) which have been destroyed during after the war by blowing them up and burning them, but not in fighting (village where mostly people with Serbian nationality lived before) and I guess that they are part of those 300. Together with the destruction in Pakrac, Lipik and Daruvar we already can see nearly every day about at least a third of that destruction it seems, and I can tell you ,you get used to it, but some times when see video's or pictures taken just after the fights you start to realise again how bad it was, not that most is rebuild already, but just the fact that the street are cleaned and a part of the windows have been renewed. In the last days we have been discussing during some "staff" meetings if we should not expend our project. A lot of people have asked if they also could come and we easily could run 15 projects with all the free help were are offered. And from the story above it is clear that even in Croatia there is still work enough, and about BiH we are not even talking yet, if you compare the destruction between BiH and Croatia, the destruction is Croatia is what is left over after the fans from two local football teams have meet each other in the local pub, the destruction in BiH is what happens if the fanclubs from two first division teams have meet eachother in a centre of a big town. It is hard however to see how to let our project grow and extend to other regions, we notice after so many months that is highly depending on the people inside the project if it works or not. In Pakrac we have gathered a good team together in the last 8 months, most contacts also outside our project with locals and other aid organisations are on personal level. But we are not sure if simular things will happen on other places. Besides of course the never ending question who is going to pay for this all. Which is even a question in Pakrac most of the time, at the moment we have again no money in the bank. Yesterday in Zagreb happened something else what is remarkable, a press conference was organised during which Manolic and Mesic decided that they are going to form a new party, called HND (Croatian party of Independent Democrats). Both are chairmen of one of the two chambers of the Croatian parliament and high up in the HDZ (the ruling party). Manolic by the way also had a high rank position in the former regime, he was head of the Yugoslav secret police, Music was the last president of Yugoslavia. Also some other leading members and members of parliament of HDZ have said that they want to join this party, from which the party line is not yet clear. Most of them are considered being the left-wing of HDZ. The only clear different at the moment is their difference with the Croatian government about the Croatian state policy towards the war in BiH, the members of the new party were heavily against the Croatian involvement there. Further on Manolic was already more or less throw out of function some days ago by the top of HDZ, because of his criticism. It seems that HDZ is now starting to fall apart, if all the people who have said that they will join HND really will change parties HDZ will loose their absolute majority in parliament and the political spectrum of Croatia will change heavily. Nevertheless most of the newspapers didn't really wrote a lot about it today, the news from Gorazde was for most of them more important. When I discussed this fact with people on the "other side" today they more or less were happy with this new development in Croatia. The united front which was formed just before and during the war seem to be broken and that means that some things can be discussed again. On the other hand the situation in sector West seems to get worst, up to now it was the sector with the least problems, but at the moment there is a serious disagreement between the two side about the specific place were the cease-fire line really lays. So in the coming weeks we are prepared to face a lot of political "fights" between the local authorities and that wouldn't make our work much easier, let's hope it will go over soon and the normalisation process can continue. Mir from somewhere in Hrvatska, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ "Zagreb Diary" can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.ztn.zer.de . Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3 (postbox 33), 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. Old numbers can be found by sending a message's with as subject "FILES" to pakrac.info@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de, to order a file send a message with subject "SEND " to same address. ## CrossPoint v3.0 ##