A conference and roundtable discussion entitled "Between Fear and the Truth - Facing the Communist Past in Southeast Europe", started in Zagreb on Tuesday.

The event was organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation from Bucharest, and the Croatian Catholic University from Zagreb, with the purpose to continue the cooperation and talks on important issues concerning the ways to deal with the past in Croatia, particularly the crimes and human rights violations committed during the communist regime in the period from 1945-1990, said the host of the conference and the Chancellor of the Croatian Catholic University, Zeljko Tanjic.

The neighbouring countries have dealt with the problem, and adopted an institutional framework to resolve it. However, this has not happened in Croatia, and an important objective of the conference is building an institutional framework for facing the past, Tanjic said.

The head of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council for Facing the Consequences of Undemocratic Regimes, Zvonko Kusic, presented a document relating communist crimes, and said that communist symbols were acceptable when referring to the anti-fascist struggle, but they could be contentious when referring to crimes and human rights violations.

Harmut Rank of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the German Ambassador to Croatia, Thomas E. Schultze, welcomed the conference.