PRESIDENT MESIC'S OFFICE DENIES "DER SPIEGEL" ARTICLE

ZAGREB, Nov 22 (Hina) - The Office of the Croatian President on Wednesday issued a statement denying an article from the German weekly Der Spiegel which claims that during a visit to Switzerland early this month, President Stipe Mesic had handed to the Swiss foreign minister files of the Croatian intelligence service HIS charging the "Tudjman clan" with having taken millions of dollars out of the country. "None of that is true," reads the statement from Mesic's office. During his meeting with Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss, President Mesic made no mention of the family of the late President Tudjman but "discussed only in principle the possibility of freezing suspicious accounts, i.e. the accounts of those persons who are under criminal investigation." The November 20 issue of Der Spiegel brings an article by Jan Dirk Herbermann and Roland Schleicher, which claims that during his 1-2 November visit to Switzerland the Croatian president had given to the Swiss foreign minister files of the former HIS director Miroslav Tudjman on "millions of dollars the Tudjman clan and their closest associates from politics and the army" had taken out of the country to other countries, including Switzerland. According to the article, Deiss had no choice but to promise his guest from Zagreb that the Swiss government would freeze the suspicious accounts as soon as it received Croatia's request. The article further states that "the new Croatian government suspects Tudjman's associates of making more than a billion dollars by trading weapons and laundering money for the Russian Mafia." (hina) rml