HSS LEADERS COMMENT ON PM'S POSITION ON INTERPELLATION REQUEST

ZAGREB, March 27 (Hina) - Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) leaders Zlatko Tomcic and Bozidar Pankretic said on Saturday they were appalled at Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's reaction to an interpellation request regarding the government's work which the HSS filed over talks on Protocol VII between Croatia and the EU. The request was also supported by other opposition deputies in the parliament.#L# "I am appalled at the prime minister's statement. Instead of admitting his mistake, he accuses me of petty politics and claims that I misled other deputies," Pankretic said at a news conference. Pankretic, who chairs the parliamentary committee on agriculture, said that his attempts to obtain more detailed information about the talks on Protocol VII, which defines customs quotas for Croatia and ten new EU members, were unsuccessful. He said that the government was hiding the relevant information from the public and parliament members but could not say why it was being kept secret or how true were claims that Croatian negotiators had agreed to some conditions which are detrimental to Croatia. He estimated that if import quotas continued to grow, the survival of the domestic food industry could be at stake in several years' time. Pankretic said the former government was wrong not to have estimated the effect of increased import quotas on Croatian farmers, and suggested that the incumbent government do that. He repeated that the government should have requested a parliamentary conclusion before starting the talks on the protocol. HSS leader Zlatko Tomcic said a parliamentary discussion about interpellation can help "cool down the game" and that the government should have considered the costs of its insistence on a positive EU opinion about Croatia's membership application. (Hina) rml