CRO. PARLIAMENT SPEAKER ADDRESSES NEW YORK WORLD SUMMIT

NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Hina) - A senior Croatian official told a UN conference on Thursday Croatia wants to have a positive influence on Southeast Europe, where it is a factor of peace and stability, through reinforcing democracy and parliamentarism, the rule of law, freedom of the media, and institutions of civil society. Croatia's parliament speaker Zlatko Tomcic addressed a New York conference gathering national parliament speakers of some 150 United Nations member-states. The conference was organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Tomcic provided a brief outline of Croatia's views of the current state of international relations. He believes contemporary challenges call for international cooperation. "The numerous UN peacekeeping operations bear witness to the fact that the emerging international circumstances do not guarantee peace and stability, while disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament, continues to be a distant goal," he said. According to Tomcic, the globalisation of economy and liberalisation of trade and movement of capital have not brought privileges to all as expected. "Sustainable development (...) still remains to be realised, as does the preservation of the environment for (...) future generations," he said. "The protection of human life and dignity, conflict prevention, conventional peacekeeping and multidimensional operations, post- conflict reconstruction and confidence building remain the key tasks of the United Nations in the new millennium," Croatia's parliament speaker said. He supported changes in the structure and mode of operation in some UN bodies in view of enabling the UN to continue performing its tasks with success. (hina) ha