GALIC WILLING TO ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY OF TRANSFORMING HRT

ZAGREB, March 15 (Hina) - Mirko Galic, a candidate for the post of Croatian Radio-Television (HRT) director, on Wednesday evening told reporters he was willing to assume responsibility for transforming the HRT into a public medium. "I feel I have been given enough free hand and sufficient autonomy to realise the public television project," Galic told the central evening news broadcast. Among his first steps after being appointed HRT's director will be the selection of a team he will best and most effectively co-operate with, he said. "The team will come forward with a programme by which it will be possible to develop HTV (Croatian Television) into a public service, namely a non-biased and pluralist television, which will be correct in its information, and a television which in the general programme sense will promote the ideas of democracy, tolerance, coexistence, and modernism," said Galic. Voicing hope the Opposition will join in the realisation of the public television programme, Galic said "a public television is more in the interest of the Opposition than in that of the authorities, because public television gives the Opposition what the former Opposition did not have, and that is a free and equal access to television." (hina) ha jn