AUSTIN, Texas, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- R.B. Baker, Chairman of Loch Harris, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: LOCH), said today that the Organization of the Croatian Mine Action Centre (CROMAC) has added their endorsement to Ruder Boskovic Institute's agreement to collaborate on development of the ELF landmine detection system. A release Friday by the Ruder Boskovic Institute based in Zagreb, Croatia, announced an agreement between Dr. Vlado Valkovic, professor of physics and head of the Institute's Applied Physics Laboratory, and Rodney A. Boone, president of both Loch Harris and its subsidiary, Chemical Detection Technology, Inc. (ChemTech). ChemTech is owner of the ELF, which is an acronym for Eliminate Landmines Forever. "CROMAC's endorsement faxed to me last night ensures that Loch's breakthrough X-ray landmine detector prototype will be field tested not in a 'staged' environment but in one of the worst mine-polluted fields in the world," said Baker. Certain agreements that Baker said could not be discussed at this time were struck in the final hours of their visit between the Loch team, which included the developer of the ELF system, noted physicist Dr. Henry Blair. Damir Gorseta, head of CROMAC, said, "We are extremely interested in such a cooperation and will support it in any way we can, because we strongly believe that it will offer a valuable contribution to the humanitarian demining system." Gorseta noted that Ruder Boskovic Institute had pledged laboratory space, equipment and staff to help ChemTech document, bench test and field test the ELF. "The Scientific Council will be involved in this cooperation on behalf of the Croatian Mine Action Center and will do its best to develop it and implement it," he said. "This is not a drill," said Loch CEO Rodney Boone in an interview Sunday at the Amsterdam airport, where he and Dr. Blair had stopped over for further business discussions. "We're taking ELF into the fiery furnace in the first quarter of 2000. Croatia's problems are real." Boone cited conversations with Dr. Milan Bajic, Deputy President of the Scientific Council of CROMAC, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Croatian Army. Bajic explained that most of the estimated 1.2 million mines in Croatia were the result of their Civil War. They are undocumented and scattered over poorly mapped terrain. "I lose a man a month," he said, "as they crawl on their bellies probing inch by inch to clear one-meter paths -- basically a shoulders' width -- on 25-meter centers through a field." And those fields constitute about 10 percent of the land of Croatia, which essentially are unusable because of the danger. "Our refugees are returning home and cannot till their lands," he said. "Regularly they are killed in their desperate attempts to survive by farming mine-polluted fields." "Give us back our lands," he pleaded. Boone welcomed the challenge and expressed confidence in a first quarter 2000 date for the field test. "Loch is not 'practicing' on pre-arranged sites in countries that do not have humanitarian problems," he said to Dr. Bajic as he departed Zagreb. "We are committed to giving your country -- and the world -- accurate detection of real 'in situ' landmines from a forward-looking aspect. And it appears that no other portable technology currently has that capability." Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The statements which are not historical facts contained in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties including but not limited to risks associated with the uncertainty of future financial results, regulatory approval processes, the impact of competitive products or other uncertainties detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  