MEETING OF G-4 RAILWAYS DIRECTORS END IN PLITVICE LAKES

PLITVICE/ZAGREB, June 21 (Hina) - Seven railway managing directors of the G-4 Group member-countries of, i.e. railways from the Danubian region to the Adriatic, decided at Friday's meeting at Plitvice Lakes National Park to establish a freight transport group which will suggest joint guidelines for the modernisation of such transport in the region, and setting in motion high quality international trains to run East-West in order to increase the share of railways in the overall transport of passengers. #L# The directors of Croatian, Austrian, Hungarian, Slovene, two Slovakian, Bosnian Federation's and Austro-Hungarian railways believe that the congestion of road traffic and ecological advantages of railways direct the further development of freight transport towards multi-modal transport. The two day meeting which ended on Friday and was hosted by Croatian Railways, focused on the promotion of passenger traffic, increasing competitiveness in freight traffic, the modernisation of infrastructure and current events relating to the restructuring of individual railways. The participants concluded that the problems of European railways were the same, and included debts to suppliers, losses in passenger and freight traffic, restructuring and surplus employees. International tourist trains were announced as forms of joint cooperation. The first such train is being introduced on Friday. It will start off from Bratislava and will arrive in Split on Saturday. The train will run during the next 12 weekends. (hina) lml