INTERIOR MINISTER URGES SABOR COMMITTEE TO INSPECT POLICE

ZAGREB, May 13 (Hina) - Croatian Interior Minister Sime Lucin has requested the parliament's Internal Affairs and National Security Committee to carry out an inspection into the police and establish if they were tapping the phones of persons close to Ante Gotovina, an indictee of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. #L# "Despite the fact that I dismissed claims that the police are tapping the phones of people close to Gotovina, the media and some individuals, including parliamentary deputies, continue to claim that the Interior Ministry is still tapping their phones," Lucin said in a letter to the Committee. Committee chairman Ante Markov (of the Croatian Peasant Party) said at today's session the Committee's control activities, which are conducted in line with the Law on Security Services, the Law on Police and the Law on the Protection of Information Confidentiality, would be known in about 20 days. Committee member Nenad Stazic (Social Democrats) said that upon the completion of control measures the committee should send a clear public message on whether there was phone tapping in the case. Another Committee member, Ivan Penic (Croatian Democratic Union), calling this "an act of demagogy", stressing that nobody in the Committee was competent for control over security services. Vlado Jukic (Croatian Party of Rights) said it was possible the police were not involved in any wiretapping in the Gotovina case, but nobody knew if the Counter-Intelligence Service (POA) was involved in it. Reporters in some media own POA reports while Committee members know nothing about them, he said. Committee chairman Markov said the Committee would announce its system of control over said services in some 20 days and was therefore translating a book on parliamentary control of intelligence services it received from the Council of Europe. (hina) rml