HOUSE OF COUNTIES WINDS UP SNAP SESSION

( Editorial: --> 5201 ) ZAGREB, July 2 (Hina) - The Croatian Parliament's House of Counties on Thursday backed a bill calling for the splitting of Croatian Post Mail and Telecommunications (HPT) into two separate companies. The upper house also voted in favour of bills proclaiming the laws on temporary take-over and management of certain property and leasing of flats in certain territories invalid. Also supported was a bill on pension insurance which was debated on Wednesday. According to the bill on post and telecommunications, the HTP would function as a single public company by the end of this year. As of 1999 it would be divided into two separate joint-stock companies, Croatian Post (HP) and Croatian Telecommunications (HT). The companies will be privatised pending a separate law which will safeguard the Government's majority in both companies and cap the ownership of other share holders at 10 per cent, Assistant Telecommunications Minister Dominik Filipovic said. While the Government emphasised that the splitting of such companies was not only quite common world-wide but also technologically and financially viable, the Opposition, which fears that the lucrative telecommunications sector could be privatised below its market value, was quite critical. In a debate on the bill invalidating the Law on the Take Over and Management of Certain Property, MPs pointed to the problem of persons who moved into devastated houses, repaired them at their own cost and must now move out to make room for returning owners. Assistant Reconstruction and Development Minister Stjepan Sterc said that such persons would be permanently accommodated at state- owned flats or houses that have been purchased by the Government's real estate agency. Before the vote on the pension insurance bill was taken, Government representatives said they were willing to consider the displaced persons' request to exclude the welfare payments they received during their years of exile, amounting to US$42 per month, from the calculation of pensions. That ended the 18th extraordinary session of the House of Counties which will reconvene in autumn. (Hina) jn mro /mbr 021921 MET jul 98