(Office of the President of Republic of Croatia)

Press release from the Jewish organization B'nai B'rith

CROATIAN PRESIDENT TELLS B'NAI B'RITH HE WILL NOT ALLOW RESURGENCE OF

FASCISM; VOWS TO PROSECUTE WORLD WAR II WAR CRIMINALS

Washington D.C. (August 1, 1995) - During a fact-finding mission to

Croatia last week, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman told B'nai B'rith

leaders that he will not permit fascism or anti-Semitism to grow in

his country. Tudjman pledged "not to allow a resurgence of fascism

with all its harmful consequences".

Meeting at the President's seaside home on the island of Brioni, Tommy

P. Baer, international president of B'nai B'rith, expressed the

organization's concern about increased Ustase and ultra-nationalist

sentiments in the government and in the population of Croatia. (During

World War Il the Ustase movement was allied with Nazi Germany).

Tudjman replied that as long as he is leader of Croatia, he will not

accept anti-Semitism and "he will marginalize all extremists".

Tudjman assured B'nai B'rith that after the war in Bosnia is over, he

would work to prosecute those involved in war crimes as part of the

Ustase movement during World War Il. He disassociated himself from any

resurgence of the movement and commented that the Croatia of the 1990s

is not the same as the Croatia of the 1940s.

While in Croatia, the group also visited the Jewish Home for the Aged

in Zagreb and met with U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, the

president of the Jewish community Ognjen Kraus, and the heads of the

Muslim and Roman Catholic communities.

B'nai B'rith worked with Tudjman in early 1994. to ask him to revise

certain sections of his book Wastelands of Historical Reality for

invidius characterizations of Jews. Tudjman pledged that future

editions will not contain the offensive sections. In a letter to B'nai

B'rith, Tudjman wrote that his "evolving relationship with and

increased understanding of the Jewish people" caused him to "realize

the hurtfulness of certain portions of this book and the

misunderstanding they have caused". Tudjman's book was first published

four years ago and will be published in English later this year.

Participants of the meeting included: Branko Lustig, Schindler's List

producer; David Ravich, chairman of B'naiB'rith's United Nations

Committee; Paul Rowe, New Jersey lawyer; and George Spectre, associate

director of B'nai B'rith's Center for Public Policy who was in Croatia

two years ago for an international conference aimed at ending the war

in Bosnia.

B'nai B'rith is the world's oldest and largest Jewish organization

with members in 55 countries. Until 1940, B'nai B'rith had six

branches in the former Yugoslavia.