"I think that the time when incidents were the main topic of reports on both sides is behind us," Nobilo said in an interview with the Slovene news agency STA on Sunday.
He said that it was logical that Slovenia should be Croatia's main partner on its path to the European Union. "We count on the assistance and advice of EU members, particularly Slovenia," he said, adding that technical cooperation between the two countries had existed during the term of the former Slovene government and that now it had been intensified.
Nobilo said that it seemed to him that Slovenia had great responsibility towards Croatia in its EU membership process, just as Croatia would have in the future in assisting other Southeast European countries on their path to the bloc.
Speaking of the decision the EU was due to take this week on whether it would open membership talks with Croatia on March 17 or not, Nobilo said that Croatia had no fall-back plan in case the talks were postponed.
"The European Union is Croatia's only alternative," the ambassador said, adding that a postponement of talks for a short while would be bad news, "but not so bad as a postponement for a longer period would be."
Nobilo said he personally did not believe that talks would be delayed for a longer period of time as that would have an adverse effect on the entire region.