SKEGRO EXPECTS FROM PRESIDENT MESIC TO OFFER HIS APOLOGIES

ZAGREB, April 28 (Hina) - A former Croatian Finance Minister, Borislav Skegro, on Friday said 102 million dollars - ensured from the sale of the Croatian Telecommunications and transferred to an Irish bank - were not intended for the purchase of social peace ahead of the elections, of which he has been accused by the media. The press has recently said that at a request of the Interior Ministry, the Croatian President's Office forwarded a transcript and tape recording the October 1999 conversation between the then President Tudjman and Skegro who informed the former that 100 million dollars had been transferred to an Irish bank, which should be used for the HDZ party to win the coming election. That sum is a part of the earnings from the privatisation of the Croatian Telecommunications and had been deposited in the reserves of the Chase Manhattan Vista bank registered in Ireland. The money was used for paying the matured state collateral to a loan granted to a concession holder of the Zagreb-Gorican motorway, Skegro told a news conference in the offices of the HDZ Secretariat in Zagreb. Skegro wondered whether he could let, in capacity of th Finance Minister "the country go bankrupt when collateral had to be paid for the Transeuropska Cesta company, that had received the loan from Italy's Mediocredito Centrale bank." He added that collateral of some 900 million kuna was paid a day before the deadline, December 2 last year. President Stjepan Mesic could have got this information from (incumbent) Finance Minister Mato Crkvenac, without listening to tapes, Skegro told reporters. To Mesic, however, the truth did not matter, he has been more interested in defaming the late President Tudjman, his aides and the HDZ, Skegro complained. The former minister called on the Government to check facts about which he was speaking and added that he was expecting from President Mesic to apologise. (hina) jn ms