CROATIAN PARLIAMENT UPPER HOUSE ENDORSES STABILITY PACT REPORT

ZAGREB, Oct 19 (Hina) - The report by Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic about The Stability Pact for the South-East of Europe was endorsed by most MPs of the Croatian National Parliament House of Counties Tuesday. Holding there was no issue to bring into question the positive aspect of the Pact, most MPs stressed it was most important how much Croatia itself would contribute to not being an object of the Pact, but an active subject in it. However, some MPs expressed scepticism regarding the Pact. The Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) bench said after three big pacts in this century, the fourth was being created -- the Stability Pact, and stressed all four were based on something the Party of Rights resented the most -- the restriction of sovereignty. Addressing the MPs at the end of the discussion, Granic said Croatia wished to achieve an individual approach and was using the Pact as support for accession into European and Euro-Atlantic processes, the Stability and Association Agreement and NATO's Partnership for peace. He explained the pact was a completely new, so far unknown form of cooperation, that it was based on voluntary participation and on amoral obligation which values the individual achievements of its members. Croatia will fight for the speed of its integration process to depend exclusively on its political, economic and democratic stability, which gives it a chance to exit the hard regional approach which ties it to countries whose achievements in the mentioned areas were far behind Croatia's, Granic said. (hina) lml jn