Minister Pusić: Countries with EU perspective should be differentiated from others

First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusić attended a two-day informal meeting of EU foreign ministers (Gymnich) in Riga

First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusić attended a two-day informal meeting of EU foreign ministers (Gymnich) in Riga, which focused on the situation in Libya and on a future role of the EU if the UN-sponsored negotiations on a government of national unity yield results. Pusić told reporters that the focus was put on Libya given that in parallel to the Riga meeting, the UN envoy for that northern African country Bernardino Leon was meeting in Rabat with representatives of warring factions from Libya. The EU countries strongly support efforts aimed at establishing a sort of government of national reconciliation and national unity in Libya, Pusić said, warning that a destabilised Libya poses a threat to Europe given that the Islamic State has already threatened to use the Mediterranean as a route to terrorize Europe, and Libya is one of the more obvious coring points.

The OSCE Secretary-General Lamberto Zannier attended the Gymnich meeting to inform EU ministers of the situation in Ukraine and of a proposal to raise the number of OSCE observers from 600 to 1,000. Pusić questioned the role of those observers in a mission that is neither bringing about peace nor keeping it. “They are merely an observation mission, prevented from accessing large parts of eastern Ukraine and gaining insight into the actual state of affairs,” Pusić told reporters, adding that the participants in the meeting energetically supported the implementation of Minsk2 agreement. "Currently, this is the only solution and the only way out of the de facto war in Ukraine,” Pusić explained. “Europe and the world don’t have a plan B for Ukraine and it is in everyone’s interest that the agreement be implemented,” she said.

The second part of the meeting saw talks with foreign ministers of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Turkey. “I underscored the need to make a difference between candidate countries and those that have already launched membership talks, as those countries have a clear European perspective,” Pusić said, adding that Bosnia and Herzegovina had not been represented because the formation of its new government was in progress.

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