"Slovakia fully supports Croatia's ambitions to become a full member of the EU, when it is ready and after it meets all the conditions, as well as its wish to join NATO as early as 2008," Kubis, who is on an official visit to Croatia, said after talks with his Croatian counterpart Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic.
The EU's institutional problems should not hamper Croatia's admission because this would mean that the EU is not meeting its own obligations, and it would send a bad signal to other countries in the region, in whose stabilisation the EU is very much interested, Kubis said.
Thanking Slovakia for its continued support to Croatia's efforts to join the EU and NATO, Grabar Kitarovic said that Croatian and Slovak experts had already held two rounds of consultations to make Croatia's negotiating process as efficient as possible. The talks are expected to continue.
The two ministers agreed that there was a need to boost trade between the two countries, which in 2005 rose by 11.2 percent to slightly more than USD200 million, which they said was below the countries' potential.
Croatia is interested in cooperation in the privatisation of its steel industry and railways, and in Slovakia's experience in the automobile industry, which has attracted great foreign investments, Grabar Kitarovic said.
The low floor trams of the Croatian Koncar company could be interesting to Slovak partners, as could the country's free zones and the infrastructure of the northern Adriatic port of Rijeka, the minister added.
Kubis and Grabar Kitarovic also discussed cooperation in the field of minority rights protection. Some 3,000 Croats live in Slovakia, and some 5,000 Slovaks live in Croatia.
Tourism plays an important role in bilateral relations, Grabar Kitarovic said, expressing satisfaction that Croatia is Slovaks' first tourist destination. As many as 230,000 Slovak tourists visited Croatia this year, she said.
Earlier in the day, the Slovak foreign minister met Parliament Speaker Vladimir Seks and PM Ivo Sanader. On Tuesday he is scheduled to meet President Stjepan Mesic.