Ministers Zuzul and Grabar-Kitarovic will travel to Brussels on Sunday when they will have a working dinner with the EU Enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn. Croatia's delegation also includes the chief national negotiator, Vladimir Drobnjak.
PM Sanader is expected in Brussels on Monday when the official talks will be held with the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the High Commissioner for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana.
At its last summit in mid-December, the European Council decided that the accession negotiations with Croatia would be opened on 17 March this year provided that Zagreb fully cooperated with the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal.
Before the official start of the negotiations, namely 17 March, Luxembourg's presidency of the EU has to establish whether Croatia is fully cooperating with the UN court. The government of Luxembourg has established contacts with the tribunal's prosecution, and the Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, is expected to visit that country in the meantime,
According to del Ponte's report to the UN Security Council, the only remaining obstacle in Croatia's full cooperation has been the country's failure to hand over the runaway general Ante Gotovina, who has been at large since July 2001, when the tribunal unsealed his indictment.
A lawyer for Gotovina has recently sent a letter to Luxembourg's EU presidency saying that his client is willing to appear before the court on condition that he would be tried in Croatia.
Commenting on the letter, Enlargement Commissioner Rehn told a Croatian daily on Saturday that the answer was clear and that Europe demanded Croatia's full cooperation with the tribunal, which implied the country's honouring of its international commitment and several UN Security resolutions, including the obligation of the transfer of the indictee to The Hague.
I hope that the government will do its best to find and hand over Gotovina, Rehn said in an interview he granted tio Saturday's issue of the Vecernji List.
A new element in Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal is a recent report on actions which Zagreb has taken to find out who harboured another indictee, Ivica Rajic, who changed the identity in August 1995 when his indictment was issued, and was in hiding in the Croatian coastal city of Split until 5 April 2003 when he was arrested and later transferred to The Hague.
The report was delivered to the Hague tribunal on 12 January this year, in line with a previous agreement.
"The correspondence is secret, but I can tell you that the Justice Ministry is meeting all requests of the Hague tribunal within the set time frames," Assistant Justice Minister Jaksa Muljacic said and thus indirectly confirmed that the report was sent to The Hague on time.