DC CALLS ON GOVT. TO ASSIGN DISMISSED POLICEMEN TO BORDER SERVICE

ZAGREB, Sept 12 (Hina) - The Democratic Centre party (DC) calls on the government to assign dismissed police officers to the border service which needs 2,000 people, and so, in a humane and moral way, remove the reason for their six-month long protest in front of the government building in downtown Zagreb, DC vice-president Josko Moric said on Thursday after a meeting with the unassigned police officers. #L# Moric and DC Secretary-General, Slobodan Lang, visited the remaining eight policemen-protesters who found shelter in St. Mark's church chapel after Wednesday'a special police intervention who dispersed the protesters following two incidents. The eight are refusing to get out of the chapel until the government fulfils their requests, that it, to reinstate them to their jobs. Stressing that this police officer protest was the longest in modern Croatian history, Moric said that in the end, Prime Minister Ivica Racan had lost his patience and, in communist method, he first sent the police against the protesters, and then said he was sorry. "This only shows that the state is being led by people who did not want it in the first place," he concluded. The CD called on the parliament to control the government's work better, and on the MPs to raise their voices against the police's acts towards the dismissed officers. (hina) lml