PRESIDENT MESIC RECEIVES JOURNALISTS' DELEGATION

ZAGREB, April 20 (Hina) - Croatian President Stipe Mesic on Thursday received a delegation of the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND), which briefed the President on the situation in the media and the state of journalistic freedoms, trade union issues, and the problems of some news-rooms. President Mesic supported HND's positions and promised to expedite the finding of solutions for problems of the media and the adjustment of Croatia's legislation with European standards, HND president Dragutin Lucic told reporters. Lucic recalled former HND president Jagoda Vukusic's statement that journalists should be the fourth authority, asserting that to achieve that, it is necessary to create "objective conditions on the state level, but also a more professional and more transparent policy on HND's part, namely a more efficient organisation with much greater rights, but a much greater responsibility as well." Today's talks also tackled the daily papers "Vecernji List" and "Vjesnik", and Hina. According to Lucic, President Mesic expressed interest in "making media bodies which have stumbled stand back on their feet, while taking account of employees." The government has the decisive role in resolving concrete issues, he said, but added that sometimes "certain private interests, namely money, are behind everything." Vukusic said President Mesic apologised at the beginning of the talks for the fact that the news on the discovery of the transcript of late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's conversation with his adviser Ivic Pasalic on the sale of "Vecernji List" was published in only one paper. Sources at the President's Office claim that was not their intention, and promised a press conference on the matter would soon be called. The chairman of HND's Central Committee, Oliver Drazic, said President Mesic had supported a demand to give Croatian Television competition on the national level. (hina) ha