ATTAINEES OF RIGHT TO HT SHARES ADDRESS DUETSCHE TELEKOM

ZAGREB, Oct 25 (Hina) - The association of people eligible to hold shares of the Croatian Telecommunications (HT), once again addressed Deutsche Telekom, a strategic investor in the HT holding 35 percent of its shares, asking whether this German company would respect the HT obligations toward a series of individual persons and legal entities that invested means in the construction of HT assets, namely its network. Citizens have largely participated in the construction of the HT network said the Association's President Barbara Markac-Despinic, at a news conference on Monday. The Association said that in 1993 one should pay 1,400 German marks to get a telephone line, and the contract read that a part of those financial means would be directed into the expansion of the HT. This particularly refers to the northern area - the Mura River valley - and Croatian islands where citizens frequently had to pay also for the construction of a local telephone exchange, Markac-Despinic said. The Association will demand from the HT to get an insight into contracts on telephone connections in order to establish the exact number of concluded contracts and how much money they ensured for the HT. According to the Statistical Office's annual report from 1997, there were almost 1.8 million of such contracts, Markac-Despinic added. She described the HT Management's Director Ivica Mudrinic's statement that the money was repaid to investors through social price of telephone impulses, as frivolous. (hina) jn ms