She was commenting on the European Commission's proposal for the creation of a regional free trade zone of five Southeast European countries covered by the Stabilisation and Association Process.
"Our position... is that CEFTA offers a good framework as an existing organisation. It is our firm position that the Euro-Atlantic integration process must be individual... based on each state's own achievements in this area," said the minister.
A government source told Hina that Prime Minister Ivo Sanader last year suggested easing conditions for CEFTA, and that after the association's summit in December he sent a letter to his counterparts from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Moldova urging that their countries join CEFTA. The source added Sanader had thus wanted to pre-empt the setting up of associations of any kind.
The Croatian government sees regional cooperation as Croatia's strategic goal because the region's countries are familiar with Croatian brands, the source said, adding that the Croatian economy could succeed in those markets through clusters and other forms of trade.
The source reiterated that every country must have an individual road to the EU and other structures, with accession granted to the country which managed first to integrally adjust its legal and economic standards to those valid in the EU.
Croatia wants to be an anchor of security and economic progress on that road, said the government source.
The creation of such a zone, as far as Croatia is concerned, should not be seen as an alternative to full membership, but as a possibility for further promoting trade within the region, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said presenting the EC proposal in Brussels today.
The EC document said that trade ministers of Southeast European countries in Sofia last June began integrating the existing network of bilateral agreements on free trade into one regional free trade zone. The process is expected to be completed by the middle of this year so that it could go into force in 2007.
The European Commission also proposed that the Pan-European system of diagonal cumulation of origin should be expanded to include countries with which the EU had signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, notably Croatia, and Macedonia.