President Ivo Josipovic has said that he does not expect any spectacular results from the parliamentary domestic affairs and national security committee regarding the clarification of an affair surrounding the printouts of telephone records of intelligence agents and executives from a private company.
In an interview with the Croatian Radio (HR) on Monday afternoon, Josipovic said he found that it was crucial to put an end to the situation in which underworld figures could obtain information about the secret police investigations in progress.
"No spectacular result should be expected, but it is important that the committee gives its contribution to clarifying the entire story," Josipovic said. Earlier on Monday the said committee began a meeting on this topic and will reconvene on Tuesday morning.
"We should focus on the crux of the problem: it has been discovered that a person believed to be connected with the underworld possesses 50 kilogrammes of materials with confidential documents. We must put an end to this situation," the head of state said.
As for the scandal of the printouts of phone records, which according to some media, were unlawfully obtained by the police, the president reiterated that the police had not violated the law.
"There were some technical errors in the procedure but there was no violation," he emphasised.
Josipovic found no special reason for convening now a session of the National Security Council.
"We are still investigating what has happened, and it is waste of time to convene such session without all relevant data," he explained.
As for the appointment of Dragan Lozancic, who holds both Croatian and U.S. citizenship, as the head of the Security Intelligence Agency (SOA), Josipovic said that the fact that Lozancic held dual citizenship should not be deemed as disputable.
"We are a young state in whose past there were ministers and senior officials who held a few citizenships. I do not doubt the loyalty of any person who has Croatian citizenship only because they have also other citizenships. They live here and share our destiny," Josipovic said.
Asked about Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic's visit to the Vatican earlier in the day and whether the Catholic Church should also carry a part of the burden of the crisis by receiving lesser funding from the state, Josipovic said that all religious communities should be offered the same from the state within the bounds of possibility.
"I am not a believer, but I firmly believe that the religious needs of citizens are the same as other needs. We should cater for religious needs just as for other needs and we should cater for religious needs of members of all religious communities," he said.
