Candidates Attacked in Serbian Enclave

Hundreds of angry Serbs attacked delegates from Croatia’s ruling party as they tried to campaign in Eastern Slavonia. U.N. official Douglas Coffman said the Croatian Democratic Union held a news conference in the town of Vukovar to present candidates who will run in the Serbian enclave during elections April 13. U.N. peacekeepers escorted the candidates to safety after protesters lobbed eggs and bricks at them. No one was seriously injured, Coffman said. The vote for county and municipal bodies will be the first held on all of independent Croatia’s sovereign territory, including Eastern Slavonia, which is due to revert to Croatian rule soon. Eastern Slavonia was one of three parts of Croatia in which local Serbs rebelled against the breakup of the old Yugoslav federation in 1991. It is now under the control of 5,000 U.N. peacekeepers.