CROATIAN WAR VETERANS TO PAY TRIBUTE TO PRO-NAZI WWII SOLDIERS
BBC Monitoring International Reports - May 2, 2005

Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA

Vukovar, 2 May: About 30 Homeland War veterans from Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Slovenia gathered at the Ovcara mass grave site outside the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar on Monday morning and set out on a pilgrimage to Bleiburg, Austria.

The pilgrims will take 12 days to cover about 600 kilometres to the Bleiburg Field to pay tribute to thousands of Croatian soldiers [of the pro-Nazi WWII Independent State of Croatia] and civilians who were executed there by Tito's Partisans at the end of the Second World War.

The send-off ceremony was attended, among others, by the Vukovar County head, the mayor and the former Hague tribunal prisoner, General Tihomir Blaskic, who said: "You are ready to be the Simon of our time and carry the cross to ensure that the victims are never forgotten."

Boze Vukusic, a spokesman for the Honorary Bleiburg Platoon, said that Bleiburg and Ovcara were the sites of the great suffering of the Croatian people and symbols of their desire for freedom and their own state.

Source: HINA news agency, Zagreb, in English 1057 gmt 2 May 05

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