PARLIAMENT HEAD ON ADRIATIC SEA ECONOMIC ZONE, EXTERNAL DEBT

ZAGREB, Aug 18 (Hina) - Croatian parliament president Zlatko Tomcic on Monday received Croatian experts in international law who informed him of the legal aspects of the possible proclamation of an economic zone in the Adriatic Sea. #L# Speaking to reporters after talks with Mladen Ibler and Zvonimir Separovic, Tomcic said Croatia could but did not have to exercise the right to have an economic zone proclaimed in the Adriatic. He said it was a question of political evaluation but that the tendency in Europe was that countries which were entitled to proclaim an economic zone did so. The matter is one of national interest and parliament should have priority in discussing it, said Tomcic. It is necessary to decide if the time is right to proclaim an economic zone, he said, adding that personally he advocated that Croatia do so as soon as possible. Reporters asked him to comment on allegations from the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) to the effect that Tomcic's Croatian Peasant Party had stolen the economic zone idea from the HSP. Tomcic said parliament debated HSP's economic zone motion in July 2001 without voting on it and that the HSS later only reintroduced the motion on the agenda. He recalled that parliament bound the government to draw up within nine months reports on the sea border, the economic zone's impact on Croatia's international standing, the fish stock, and means required to supervise the zone. The government has still not submitted the reports. Asked how much the proclamation of the zone would affect Croatia- Slovenia relations, Tomcic said he thought "the Slovenes have no grounds to react harshly". Academician Ibler said after the talks there were no legal obstacles to proclaiming an economic zone and that possible hurdles would be political and not legal in nature. Tomcic also commented on the International Monetary Fund's concern over Croatia's growing external debt and assumptions that the government would use part of the money made from the recent sale of shares of the domestic oil company INA to Hungary's MOL to cover the external debt. The parliament president said it was impermissible that the executive and monetary authorities in a serious country should have views on the external debt as opposing as Croatia's Finance Minister Mato Crkvenac and central bank governor Zeljko Rohatinski. Tomcic said the external debt was not a topic for media skirmishes but a very serious issue on which very clear stands had to be taken. He urged deciding about the limit to which Croatia could run into debt without jeopardising its own monetary security and that of all those indebted. (hina) ha