NEGOTIATIONS ON COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT FOR PHYSICIANS HAVEN'T BEGUN - MINISTER

ZAGREB, Jan 9 (Hina) - Negotiations on a collective agreement for physicians did not start today and media announcements of it were "ill-intentioned", Health and Welfare Minister Andrija Hebrang said on Friday after talks with the leader of the Croatian Physicians Union (HLS), Ivica Babic.#L# Hebrang told reporters Babic had informed him about reactions in the HLS to the government's decision to cancel a previous decision ordering doctors back to work after they went on strike early last year. "It is inconceivable to order doctors back to work because I didn't have to do it during the war, when they were working in the hardest conditions," Hebrang said, adding that the annulment of the decision had restored doctor-patient trust. Babic said the HLS stuck by the requests it set before the strike, last January. Physicians seek dialogue, a collective agreement for their branch, the protection of their rights, and equating their salaries with those of judges, as was the case with the previous collective agreement. Asked for a comment on the Independent Union of Science and Higher Education's claim that he had breached procedural and democratic customs by opening negotiations with only one union, before talks with a committee of all public and state workers' unions, Hebrang said that union either was not familiar with the matter or had fallen for ill-intentioned information about the start of negotiations. (Hina) ha sb