According to conclusions the ministers adopted at their regular monthly meeting, full and unconditional cooperation of Western Balkan countries with the UN court remains a significant request for the continuation of EU integration.
The EU Council of Ministers called on Croatia to take the necessary steps to achieve full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, and reiterated that the remaining indictee must be located and transferred to The Hague as soon as possible.
The Council welcomed the draft negotiating framework for Croatia, calling on competent bodies to examine the draft in view of reaching agreement on it so that entry negotiations could start on March 17, provided that Croatia fully cooperated with the Hague tribunal, in accordance with decisions adopted by the European Council on 16 and 17 December 2004.
Speaking at the closing press conference, EU Council chair Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg said Croatia was welcome in the EU but must do everything so that on March 16 it could be concluded that cooperation with the tribunal was full.
Today's conclusions were adopted without debate. According to Slovene Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, Croatia was informally discussed in a break of today's meeting.
Rupel told Croatian reporters there was no change in the EU member countries' stand on the start of Croatia's EU entry negotiations.
"There have been no changes. There remains the request for closer cooperation with the Hague tribunal. I think that the member-states will not back down or change their mind on the matter," he said.
Before the meeting, Asselborn called on Croatian authorities to do everything to establish full cooperation with the tribunal.
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn's spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy told the press the European Commission had not changed its position in relation to statements made by Rehn on January 31.
Rehn said on that occasion that based on the Commission's information about Croatia's cooperation with the UN court at the time, he could not recommend the start of the entry negotiations.
Commission spokeswoman Francoise Le Bail told the same press conference that the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, had recently met Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and told him that Croatia was not cooperating fully.
Le Bail quoted Barroso as saying the European Commission would find it very hard to launch the entry negotiations with Croatia in the absence of full cooperation with the tribunal.
The decision on whether the negotiations will start on March 17, as scheduled, will be made by the EU Council the day before.
Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader arrives in Brussels tomorrow. He and the prime ministers of candidate countries will attend a meeting with the chairman of the European Council, Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker, who will inform him of the results of an EU-US summit.