Mesic said this on Thursday opening the two-day conference called "Communication of Heritage: A new Vision of Southeastern Europe" which has pooled heads of state of Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro and the chairman of Bosnia-Herzegovina's three-man presidency, ministers from Serbia and Turkey, a Romanian state secretary and the ambassadors of Greece and Slovenia in Croatia, as well as the UNESCO Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura, and the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis.
The conference has been organised by the Office of the Croatian President, in cooperation with the Culture Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, the Council of Europe and UNESCO.
Mesic stressed that southeastern European countries had left behind a period when they had feared each other and that they had turned to dialogue.
He added that dialogue was not something which had been imposed by external partners but countries in concern had encouraged this process by themselves.
The Balkans is no longer a catchword for the conflict and the countries in the region share not only their geographic position but also their joint European goals, the Croatian president said.
We are aware that in the region there are still some open issues which can affect our future but I believe that we are aware that those issues must not cause new conflicts, he added.
According to Mesic, since the last summit meeting of this kind in the Bulgarian resort of Varna last year, the countries in the region have made great progress achieving an agreement on the joint energy market in southeastern Europe and are now trying to reach agreement on a new trade regime.