"We hope that the EU will soon make that decision so that we could start the process of negotiations," the AFP quoted Grabar Kitarovic as saying to members of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
Answering questions by European parliamentarians, Grabar Kitarovic spoke about Croatia's cooperation with the UN tribunal and reported about the government's efforts to implement its action plan aimed at locating runaway general Ante Gotovina. She voiced confidence that the EU would recognise Croatia's efforts and reach a consensus on the start of talks, the Croatian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to agency reports, the minister spoke about the reform of police forces and intelligence services, as well as about the ongoing public campaign to raise awareness about the need of cooperation with the Hague tribunal.
The minister said that the intensive search for the runaway general was making progress and added that the start of entry talks with the EU would not mean that Gotovina's arrest was a closed case, the AP reported.
Several European parliamentarians said Croatia should do more to remove from public places posters showing the fugitive general.
Grabar Kitarovic said that on September 1 and 2 she would attend an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Newport, Wales, where she would inform her colleagues about efforts to solve the last remaining outstanding issue regarding cooperation with the UN tribunal.
The minister informed her colleagues about Croatia's position on Slovenia's bill declaring an ecological zone and a continental shelf in the Adriatic. She repeated that Croatia was ready to continue cooperation with Slovenia with the aim of promotion of relations between the two countries which shared common values and strategic goals and in the spirit of European cooperation and the tradition of mutual respect, without ruling out the possibility of arbitration as a joint solution, the Foreign Ministry said in the statement.
"Slovenia's initiative is a big problem for us because it is contrary to international law in several points. The zone would stretch in front of Croatia's territorial waters and it would have no contact with Slovenia's territorial waters. Under the international maritime law no state can cross the middle line and declare a zone without agreement among the countries concerned," the Slovene news agency STA
quoted the minister as saying.
"Unfortunately, under the Slovene bill the borderline was drawn in front of the Croatian coast and it stretches approximately to the middle of the Croatian Istria peninsula," Grabar Kitarovic said.
Commenting on a decrease in the support of Croatian citizens for EU membership, the minister said she hoped the support would improve once entry talks started and once the debate focused on the important elements of citizens' everyday life because it was citizens who had to profit the most from the integration process.
During her two-day working visit to the European Parliament, Grabar Kitarovic also met European Parliament Vice-President Ingo Friedrich, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elmar Brok, Foreign Affairs Committee Rapporteur for Croatia Hannes Swoboda, and the EPP-ED (European People's Party and European Democrats) Group's Rapporteur for Croatia, Bernd Posselt.