Speaking about Croatia’s accession to NATO membership, Minister Jandroković informed Minister Göncz that all of the NATO members had ratified the Enlargement Protocol and that the remaining four national ratification instruments are about to be deposited in the US State Department.
The ministers expressed joint conviction that in NATO’s Strasbourg/Kehl Summit in April Croatia would participate as its full-fledged member. In that regard, Minister Jandroković thanked the Hungarian Embassy in Zagreb, which as NATO’s Contact Point assisted Croatia in its NATO accession.
Regarding the current state of Croatia’s EU accession negotiations, he reiterated Croatia’s intention to complete them by end-2009, as stated in the European Commission’s Road Map, explaining that Croatia wants the border dispute to be separated from the accession negotiations, the negotiations to be unblocked, and the bilateral border issue with Slovenia to be solved before the International Court of Justice.
Minister Göncz said she is convinced the Croatian-Slovenian border dispute can be separated from Croatia’s accession negotiations, which would result in the unblocking of the negotiations and create conditions for solving the dispute in accordance with the international law.
The meeting pointed out that Croatia’s joining the Euro-Atlantic structures represents a model for all of the countries of South Eastern Europe, while the completion of that process rests on a successful implementation of the remaining reforms.
As regards the bilateral relations, Minister Jandroković and Minister Göncz pointed out a series of areas in which the two countries wish to intensify the cooperation, such as the development of energy and transport infrastructure, cross-border cooperation, cooperation in culture, education, environmental protection, and minority rights. The pending joint session between the Croatian and Hungarian government set for March 26th 2009 is a further step in that direction, said Jandroković and Göncz.
In the afternoon, Minister Jandroković and Minister Göncz held speeches at the ceremonial conference on the occasion of NATO’s 60th anniversary, 10th anniversary of the first enlargement to Eastern Europe, and in light of Croatia’s NATO accession, held at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Science.