CITY ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT REQUESTS GOVT'S DECISION ON DISSOLUTION

ZAGREB, March 11 (Hina) - President of the Zagreb City Assembly, Zlatko Canjuga, requested of the Croatian Government on Saturday to submit to him the alleged resignations of two Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) councillors, Ranko Marinkovic and Miroslav Sutej, to their posts, as well as the entire subject and decision by which the Government on Friday night dissolved the Zagreb City Assembly. Twenty-six councillors (out of a total of 50) submitted their resignations on Friday, including 24 from opposition parties and two from the Assembly's majority led by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Pursuant to the resignations, the Croatian Government adopted a decision on dissolving the Zagreb City Assembly and appointed Josip Kregar, a professor at Zagreb's Law School, its commissioner for the City of Zagreb. Describing this as an act without precedent, Canjuga announced he would file a complaint against the decision to the Constitutional Court. "This is a very negative move by the Croatian Government, of which I believe Prime Minister Ivica Racan did not know the background and the extortion of resignations. It is unbelievable that the Government, with all its urgent commitments, has reached such a political solution which we hold it must withdraw," Canjuga told reporters at an extraordinary news conference Saturday. He asserted that the Government's commissioner was taking on the responsibility for the functioning of the representative and executive authorities in Zagreb, as well as managing the city, "which annuls the democratic results of elections of April 1997". "As of tonight the Zagreb City Assembly, the city HDZ and HDZ councillors have no responsibility for the functioning of services in Zagreb," Canjuga said two hours after the Government made its decision Friday. Canjuga stressed that none of the leading officials at the City Assembly, nor him as its president, had received the resignations of members of the Assembly. "The alleged resignations on the part of HDZ members were not submitted to me. In their statements to me today the councillors (Marinkovic and Sutej) have said they are withdrawing their resignations," Canjuga said. He showed reporters signed statements in which Ranko Marinkovic said "it is incorrect that I signed a resignation to the duty of member of the City Assembly to the SDP (Social Democratic Party)," and was "withdrawing the extorted signed resignation and remains HDZ's councillor". In his two statements, Miroslav Sutej said he had signed the resignation which he was now withdrawing, but for personal reasons he was handing in a new resignation, and was giving back HDZ's mandate. "Their mandates were obviously forced and falsified," Canjuga said, adding that the HDZ can, after such resignations, appoint deputy councillors from their party list. "We cannot understand this violent act by opposition parties led by the city branch of the SDP, to without any justified reason or announcements to the Assembly, initiate premature elections," Canjuga said. He described this as "a coup of the worst kind, politically utterly impermissible and undemocratic conduct." He announced the Assembly would hold its regularly scheduled session on March 14, because, he says, he has "a quorum of 26 HDZ councillors". Zagreb's Mayor Marina Matulovic-Dropulic told reporters on Saturday she had heard about the dissolution of the Zagreb City Assembly and her new post -- in the state administration -- on Croatian Television. She asserted she would arrive for work on Monday as usual because she was also the Zagreb County prefect, and she had not yet received a decision as to her new post. Dropulic recalled that she was for elections ahead of time, but they had to be held normally and legally. Stressing everything in Zagreb was functioning properly, Dropulic said the decision on the dissolution of the City Assembly was a political decision. She described the act as unbelievable because she did not understand how it was possible to separate state administration and local self-government which, she said, had been done now. The Zagreb City Assembly lived through a crisis in 1995 with the failure of the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to confirm mayors proposed by the then Opposition. The crisis ended in 1997, when the HDZ won the necessary majority of 26 councillors after two opposition councillors joined HDZ's ranks. (hina) lml