Jansa gave this statement on Monday in parliament while he was responding to the accusations of his predecessor, former PM Anton Rop, who said Jansa damaged Slovenia's reputation by supporting Croatia's bid to start the entry talks, although, according to Rop, Zagreb was not fully cooperating with the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal.
"Slovenia has not contested the work of the Hague tribunal, but it has defended last year's conclusion on the start of (EU's) negotiations with Croatia. It is a misinterpretation to say that a condition for the start (of the talks) is the transfer of the last indictee (to the Hague tribunal), and Croatia has done all it could to prove that it is fully cooperating," Jansa said adding that he believed Croatia's entry talks would start in the first half of this year, namely during the Luxembourg Presidency of the European bloc,
Slovene PM said it was in Slovenia's interest to see the entire western Balkan area in the EU.
According to the DPA news agency, another Croatian neighbor, Hungary, also hopes that Zagreb will start the entry talks.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Ferenc Somogyi was quoted by the DPA news agency as saying that after Monday's talks with his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja in Helsinki that he believed "Croatia would be would be able to convince the 25- nation bloc that Zagreb was cooperating well with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)".