A population census in Croatia started Friday and will run through April 28, conducted by the Bureau of Statistics (DZS) with the participation of 5,000 census takers and 2,000 controllers including Serbs and other minorities.

The first preliminary results should be known in two months, around June 30.

Unlike the 2001 census, the Serbian National Council (SNV) managed to make the proportional representation of Serbs in the total population of a local community a criterion in the selection of census takers, which will certainly have an encouraging effect on many of the people polled.

According to Sasa Milosevic, SNV deputy leader and president of the Serb minority council in Zagreb, the SNV and district minority councils will monitor the census.

SNV, ZVO and the Independent Democratic Serbian Party urged Serbs to declare their nationality and religion, because this determines the individual and collective rights Serbs will enjoy in Croatia - from the number of representatives at all levels, to jobs in public service, to use of language and alphabet, as well as Serbian language and Cyrillic media.

Of the 15,634 declared Orthodox in Zagreb, only 129 are registered as members of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC).

Serbian President Boris Tadic urged Thursday the people in the region's countries which will conduct censuses to freely express their national, linguistic and religious affiliation.

The media, and the internet portals of Serb organizations published SPC Patriarch Irinej's call to Serbs to take part in the census, and freely state they are Orthodox Serbs.

After the 1991 census, major demographic changes occurred: 20,000 people were killed in the war, there was a wave of emigration of Croats, and a significantly larger one of Serbs - around 256,000.

This was followed by the return of refugees from Serbia (around 80,000 people), and the immigration of Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina (around 200,000 people), as well as the redistribution of Croatian citizens within Croatia, demographics expert Ivan Ljajic of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies said last year.

According to the 2001 census, 89.6 percent of Croatia's population were Croats, which is 14.8 percent more than in 1991, and the share of national minorities dropped from 14.91 to 7.5 percent, with the Serb minority suffering the biggest drop - from 12.2 to 4.54 percent.