INTERIOR MINISTER SAYS JOURNALISTS ARENT'S SYSTEMATICALLY TAPPED

ZAGREB, Nov 24 (Hina) - Journalists are not being systematically tapped and police files on journalists are not being made, Croatian Interior Minister Ivan Penic told the Croatian parliament's Upper House during Question Hour on Tuesday. He said there were no files on any social group as such, but added that the Constitutional Order Protection Service (SZUP) does have a data base on persons who have in any way been part of a security problem. In answer to Ratko Maricic of the Social Democratic Party, who asked about the truthfulness of a female journalist's statement that she had seen her file, which contained data collected by tapping, Penic said he did not wish to comment on certain media reports. The reason for using the SZUP is never the individual, but security problems, the minister said. "Nobody is tapped because he is a journalist, politician, attorney, soldier, or professor. But the profession in itself, be it even journalism, does not amnesty an individual from such possibilities," Penic pointed out. Disclosing certain rules of SZUP activities is disclosing confidential data, which is prohibited, said the minister. If statements on the existence of SZUP files are manipulated in public, they represents "deliberately placed misinformation", Penic said. He also recalled the legal provisions referring to SZUP activities. The service, he said, uses methods of work like all other intelligence services. One of them is tapping, which is made use of according to a strictly stipulated procedure. (hina) ha mm