NATIONAL SECURITY COMMITTEE ON DEFENSE AND SECURITY STRATEGIES

ZAGREB, Feb 18 (Hina) - The parliamentary committee for external affairs on Monday discussed a draft defense strategy. The defense system must comply with security challenges from the outside, but also be a factor of internal stability and the country's democratic future, said Defense Minister Jozo Rados. The defense strategy refers to a period of ten to 15 years, and it is clear that it exceeds the length of the rule of one authority, Rados said. Rados and the first deputy prime minister, Goran Granic, said the strategies of defense and national security should be adopted by a political consensus. Representatives of civic society and experts attended today's session. In a discussion on the draft strategy of national security, several attendants said the NATO was unnecessarily, sometimes euphorically, idealised. A professor at the Zagreb School of Law, Bozidar Javorovic, said a wish for joining NATO and the EU was positive, but it does not mean that it should be idealised as something which would solve all our security problems. The Croatian Helsinki Committee president, Zarko Puhovski, said there were signs of euphoria regarding the said organisation. I believe we should speak about war against terrorism more seriously and critically in light of events of the past months (since September 11 2001), Puhovski said, and warned this war had led to a global freezing in the area of human rights and that Croatia should not follow some bad examples of others. (hina) np sb