(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic and Prime Minsiter Tihomir Oreskovic will meet on Tuesday in Zagreb to discuss the fate of the head of Security and Intelligence Agency SOA.
Media reports say the future of Dragan Lozancic the head of SOA will be the main topic of the discussion.
Croatian media reported last week that the SOA unintentially taped Grabar Kitarovic in April during her conversation with Zdravko Mamic executive president of Dinamo Zagreb football club. Mamic was under serveillance of SOA at that time and later arrested in July on suspicion for corruption and embezzlement.
The President ought first to have been informed that the SOA was monitoring Mamic.
According to reports Grabar Kitarovic and Oreskovic will discuss the removal of Lozancic which requires mutual agreement between the President and Prime Minister.
BIRN submitted inquiries about the case to the office of the President last week but had not recived a reply confirming or rejecting the media speculation by Monday. When the tape case went public Grabar Kitarovic was on a three-day visit to Poland.
The SOA last week said that “it does not comment on media reports”.
Lozancic who was born in the US and returned to Croatia in the early 1990s was appointed in October 2012 by the country's former centre-left leaders Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and President Ivo Josipovic.
He took the post after Josip Buljevic from centre-right Croatian Democratic Union HDZ left office. Buljevic who was recently named defence minister.
The head of the SOA normally changes in Croatia each time there is a shift between right and left-wing governments.
Before heading the SOA Lozancic worked in the Defence Ministry under the then centre-left government in early 2000s before becoming head of SOA.
He was also a lecturer at the European Centre for Security Studies George C Marshall in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany.