CENTRAL COMMITTEE MEMBER SEKS ON DESTABLIZATION OF HDZ

ZAGREB, Feb 25 (Hina) - Speaking of "attempts to provoke a schism" inside the party, member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Central Committee Vladimir Seks said that the goal of the attempts was to "create the people's distrust and eventually to politically destroy the HDZ paving the road to power for those who had opposed the free and democratic Croatian state." "The most displeasing and most serious among the attempts was the one by Josip Manolic and Stjepan Mesic," Seks said, referring to the Croatian Independent Democrats (HND), a group of dissidents, led by Mesic and Manolic, who had defected the HDZ late in 1993. The two, according to Seks, had "attempted to conspiratorially seduce and take with them a part of senior party and state officials, while a part of the opposition saw in it its own chance to overthrow the HDZ without election." Their attempt was however "unmasked and prevented by a decisive President Tudjman's and party's political action which had averted the state, parliamentary and constitutional crisis," Seks said. He also commented on the press, a part of which also threw itself "with full ardor into attempts of disrupting Croatian state, its both interior and foreign policies." "After reaching power at the 1990 election, the HDZ, in line with its principles of excluding any sort of revenge seeking, enabled the press to float freely. "But that enabled one class to consolidate itself and take control over a part of media, which started reaffirming Yugo-ideas and values of the ruined old regime," Seks said, adding that the "class enjoyed support from those political circles abroad which had never grieved down the dissolution of Yugoslavia." He specified that such activities were situated in the papers like Zagreb-based magazines of Globus, Nacional and Arkzin, Split- based weekly of Feral Tribune, and Rijeka-based daily of Novi List. "Their strategy was to provoke an artificial crisis," Seks said, adding that the HDZ should "unmask in public, in media" all the "tactical variants and strategic goals of fabricating false assertions of alleged schism in the party." He also added it was necessary, in line with the Constitution and the legislation examples in the European Union, to adopt such legal provisions which should make a clear difference between the democratic right to criticize and the abuses of democracy devised to jeopardize the foundations of democratic system. (Hina) jn bk 251613 MET feb 96