<p>I have to work on an old 1.3 JVM and I'm asked to create a secure connection to another server. Unfortunately the HttpsURLConnection only appears sinc JVM 1.4. </p>

<p>Is there another way to create a secure connection? Is there a library that I could you to add this fonctionnality?</p>

You need to install the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE), which used to be required because Sun wouldn't ship it with the JDK because of comedy export restrictions. I had a look on Sun's web site, but the JDK 1.3 instructions are preving elusive.  Bear in mind that JDK 1.3 is now end-of-lifed by Sun, so they may not have any information any more.
http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/sslguide.html