Minister Pusić meets BiH Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdžija

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić on the fringes of Dublin conference held bilateral talks with Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zlatko Lagumdžija

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić on the fringes of Dublin conference held bilateral talks with Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zlatko Lagumdžija. Pusić told the reporters that the region’s stability rested first and foremost on the region itself, but that meetings and communication certainly helped.

Asked about the meeting with Serbian Foreign Minister Ivan Mrkić, Pusić said the official meeting was scheduled for the following day, but that she had already talked with Mrkić today about continuing the cooperation and repairing the relations shaken by the recent Hague rulings. “Full cooperation with the tribunal was one of the preconditions for Croatia’s EU accession. Said case dragged on for seven and a half years. We have cooperated to the fullest extend and this is the result of respecting international institutions. If our neighbours, with whom we wish to have good relations, have any complaints in that regard, they should voice them not to Croatia, but to the Security Council and the UN as founders of the Hague Tribunal”, said Pusić.

Lagumdžija thanked Pusić for Croatia’s assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina along its road to Euro-Atlantic integration, underlining too the support expressed during the visit by U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region.

He commented on the preparations for the meeting scheduled for 19 December in Brussels, which should resolve on a technical level the two countries’ outstanding issues, for which there is good will on both sides. The topics of the meeting are to include border crossings, passage through Neum and use of the Port of Ploče.

“Things need to be resolved on a technical level. We hope that our commissions will make headway so that in the following six months we could have a solution to the issue of border crossings and the Neum exit point, and that the city of Dubrovnik with its hinterland could be fully integrated into the EU in term of communication, in the simplest way possible”, Lagumdžija said. He added that all the goods passing through the Port of Ploče into Bosnia and Herzegovina should pass freely. As for the Pelješac Bridge, Lagumdžija said he was leaving that issue to the experts.

Pusić also met with British Minister for Europe David Lidington, with whom she talked about completing the action plan. Lidington said that in ten days or so Croatia’s Accession Treaty would be in its second reading and that he expected on obstacles.

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