HUP director Davor Majetic said the HUP membership included and represented both milk farmers and the dairy industry.

HUP supports the legal right of everyone to demonstrate and protest, but it also supports and defends everyone's constitutional right to work and therefore strongly condemns road and factory blockades, Majetic said.

HUP believes that the purchase price of milk is a market category and that it must be negotiated by milk farmers and milk buyers.

It is obvious that previous models were not entirely in line with market conditions and did not envisage changes in the market situation, said Majetic.

He said that it was obvious that milk farmers had failed to prepare on time for new business conditions, which he blamed partly on the previous governments, calling on the Agriculture Ministry and the government to help define models that would enable milk farmers to go through transition as painlessly as possible and give them some time to adjust to new market conditions.

Milka Kosanovic of HUP's Food Industry and Agriculture Department said the competitiveness of the national agricultural sector depended on only several companies which accounted for half the value created in the farming sector.

Trying to help raise the competitiveness of all players in the agricultural sector, the government has contributed also through grants, but apparently the grants were not used in a purposeful way, she said, adding that much stricter control of grants was necessary.

The head of the Croatiastocar trade association, Branko Bobetic, said the agreement between milk farmers and the dairy industry would enable unobstructed purchase of all milk offered for sale, and that conditions were being created to prevent, at least for the time being, new increases in prices of dairy products.

Bobetic, too, called on the milk farmers who were still protesting to join the agreement, remove roadblocks and solve their problems at sessions of the Council for the Dairy Industry.