DEPUTY PM SAYS BOBETKO CASE HAS BECOME PURELY POLITICAL ISSUE

ZAGREB, Oct 29 (Hina) - Deputy Prime Minister Goran Granic said on Tuesday the issue of General Janko Bobetko had become a purely political matter and that no one was interested in the general himself any longer. #L# The alleged protection of Bobetko has become a political message saying that he will be used to topple the government, Granic told a news conference. The 83-year-old general's condition is deteriorating and he requires care and rest which only a hospital can provide, and not the environment he is in, said Granic. According to his knowledge, Bobetko's doctors are trying to help, but the people around the general will not let the matter move on from being a political issue. Granic maintained that further contacts with the general were pointless. He said that at one point Bobetko, his doctors and attorneys were willing that he be hospitalised. This, however, was followed by speculation that he might be arrested, so nothing came of it, he added. The issue of how and when to serve the general with the indictment the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague has issued against him is a matter for the judiciary, the government has nothing to do with it any longer, said Granic. If there is no voluntary consent, the matter may be procrastinated through legal means within the domestic judiciary, but that concerns Bobetko's lawyers and not the government, he stated. In Bobetko's case the government has resorted to all legal remedies which, however, are limited, and the matter has to be ultimately settled in court, and the general's lawyers know this, said Granic. Declining to speculate as to the outcome of two government appeals to the Hague tribunal in connection with the indictment and when it would be served on the accused, Granic said the extent of Bobetko's participation in any kind of process was questionable. The general's entering a plea of not guilty would be better than no plea at all, but an agreement about this with Bobetko has not been reached, said Granic. He said the government expected the Hague tribunal's Appeals Chamber would convene soon, but that it was uncertain how long the procedure would take, weeks or months. Asked about the case of another Croat indicted by the Hague tribunal, Ante Gotovina, who is at large, Granic said the government had requested that the court's investigators directly cooperate with the Croatian police. Until now, the tribunal would submit information that Gotovina had been seen in Croatia weeks or months before. Police subsequently established that such information was groundless, said Granic. He resolutely refuted some media's speculation about a conflict between him and PM Ivica Racan over the Bobetko case. Granic said there were no differences in opinion between him and Racan, that both stood firmly by the documents forwarded to the Hague tribunal and the Croatian Constitutional Court regarding the matter. Granic said he and Racan had agreed it was not necessary that he be in Zagreb during chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's recent visit, which was why he had travelled to Cairo to attend an energy congress. Granic chairs the government's council for cooperation with the Hague tribunal. (hina) ha sb