The United Nations refugee agency has closed its last three field offices in Croatia, a move it said symbolizes a ``sea change'' in the tiny republic

The United Nations refugee agency has closed its last three field offices in Croatia, a move it said symbolizes a ``sea change'' in the tiny republic once ravaged by fighting in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The three field offices, which helped repatriate one-time refugees, were closed at the end of the year, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees said in a statement Wednesday. It said local relief agencies and the government can handle the remaining work. Croatian Serbs took up arms in 1991 to rebel against the country's independence from the former Yugoslavia and seized a third of the country, killing thousands of Croats. In 1995, Croatia recaptured those areas in two blitz offensives, and many Croats took revenge, killing hundreds of Serbs and forcing at least 150,000 of them to flee the country. ``After such a dramatic decade, a sea change is the only way to describe the refugee agency's closure,'' the UNHCR statement said.