Croatia Reaches Agreement with EU Member Slovenia on Restart of Entry Talks With Bloc - Hina

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor has sent a statement to the EU Presidency saying that no document, position, written or oral statement in Croatia's negotiating process prejudges an outcome to the bilateral border demarcation issue, Hina said following Kosor's meeting in Ljubljana with her Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor.

In February, international news organisations reported that Slovenia insisted Croatia had brought documents into the EU process that would have pre-judged a solution to the border dispute.

Croatia's EU membership talks, launched in 2005, hit a major snag last December when its neighbour Slovenia vetoed any further progress in the negotiations with the government in Zagreb because of a dispute over their Adriatic sea border in the Bay of Piran. The dispute is dating back to the collapse in 1991 of the former Yugoslav Federation, of which both Croatia and Slovenia were parts.

Pahor said the negotiations on the settlement of the border row would resume within the scope of the EU from the point at which they were suspended on June 15, when EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn's latest proposal was on the table, Hina reported on Friday.

In April, Rehn proposed that the border issue is brought before an ad hoc international arbitration tribunal.

Pahor also said on Thursday that the Slovenian government will propose that the committees on foreign and EU affairs of the Slovenian parliament lift any restraints on Croatia's EU accession talks.

Hina also quoted him as saying that if the proposal was backed by parliament, the two sides have agreed to resume the accession negotiations as soon as possible. Pahor said the two countries would call on Sweden, the country currently presiding over the EU, to organise an accession conference as soon as possible so that the gridlock in the entry process could be resolved and the talks on the settlement of the border row resumed simultaneously.