"I believe that Croatia will meet the condition of full cooperation and prove that it is fully cooperating with the Hague tribunal. At the moment the postponement of the negotiations is out of question, and we are intensively preparing ourselves for the negotiations and ask that they start on 17 March," the Croatian minister said.
Grabar Kitarovic and her colleagues from other candidate countries attended a working lunch with EU member states' European affairs ministers in Brussels today.
She said that her optimism was based on what "Croatian services, including diplomats, are doing", and therefore she "believes that by 17 March, Croatia will prove that it is investing maximum efforts so as to solve the remaining issue in the cooperation with the Hague tribunal," i.e. case of the runaway general Ante Gotovina.
Grabar-Kitarovic held several bilateral meetings in Brussels during the day. Asked by reporters whether any of her interlocutors told her that Croatia could but did not want to arrest the fugitive general, the Croatian minister answered in the negative.
"They have told me that Croatia must really invest maximum efforts and that it should prove this," she added.
The Croatian minister said that some countries interpret Croatia's full cooperation with the Hague tribunal as the arrest of Gotovina. There is another group of countries that " are much more objective and fair in interpreting the full cooperation as Croatia's obligation to invest maximum efforts" in order to solve that outstanding issue, she explained.