SLOVENE ENVIRONMENT MINISTER ON SITUATION ON NUCLEAR PLANT DEAL

LJUBLJANA, June 28 (Hina) - Slovenian Environmental and Zoning Minister Janez Kopac on Friday stated that the ratification of the agreement on the Krsko nuclear power plant was blocked in the Slovenian parliament however, Slovenia could not initiate further negotiations with Croatia until the parliament finally makes its stance known about the ratification. #L# This is a huge problem and MP's who requested a judgement by the constitutional court with regard to the nuclear plant have brought into question the very credibility of the country, Kopac said in an interview for Slovenian Television. He referred to the move by MP's, mostly from the opposition, as an unnecessary manoeuvre that will not resolve the problem but just complicate it even further. Kopac said that the group that forwarded the submission to the constitutional court at the same time obtained sufficient votes for the matter to be presented at a referendum. A representative of the MP's opposed to the agreement, Andrej Bizjak from the Social Democratic Party, said that the move was not a manoeuvre but that the government had tried to speculate and only presented the agreement to the parliament for ratification recently even though it was signed more than a year ago. (hina) sp sb