The talks focused on the implementation of an action plan, which the Sanader cabinet launched earlier this year with the aim of locating runaway general Ante Gotovina, and the opening of EU membership talks with Croatia.
The Croatian prime minister informed me about the implementation of the action plan and I am going to brief the British prime minister and the foreign secretary and we shall together consider every new information pertaining to the action plan, Prescott said after meeting Sanader.
Prescott said his country supported the enlargement of the European Union and that Britain had always been in favour of continuing the EU enlargement process.
The British deputy prime minister said that there were very important conditions which were not set by his country but by the EU regarding cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
We must be sure that everything possible has been done, Prescott said describing his talks with Sanader as very good.
Sanader also met with prime ministers Aigars Kalvitis of Latvia, Andrus Ansip of Estonia, Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, Matti Vanhanen of Finland and Marek Belka of Poland.
"We have taken the opportunity at today's talks with European Union prime ministers and with the British deputy prime minister to discuss the situation regarding Croatia's progress towards the EU," Sanader said after the talks which he described as successful.
According to Sanader, the EU officials said that they supported the further enlargement of the Union and that Europe was not tired of enlargement and negative results as shown by recent referendums in France and the Netherlands.
Croatia enjoys in general the support of Great Britain, too, which is the current chair of the European Union, as well as of others, the Croatian prime minister told reporters.
It was reiterated that Croatia should meet the membership conditions, and Sanader said that Croatia was aware of that and wanted to meet those conditions.
The case of Gotovina is still unsolved, and he must come and answer questions from his indictment in The Hague, and I think that this remaining problem will be solved, the Croatian premier said.
Asked by reporters to comment on the fact that the British official this morning did not mention the Gotovina case as a requirement, but pointed out the need for Croatia to fully cooperate with the Hague tribunal, Sanader said that such a formulation suited Croatia. He added that Croatia had always been in favour of the interpretation, as given by most countries, that full cooperation did not mean that Gotovina must be in The Hague but that Croatia should prove that it made every effort to locate, arrest and transfer the fugitive general to The Hague.
"If he is out of reach of the Croatian government then the government cannot be held responsible for that," Sanader said.
The Croatian prime minister stressed that the action plan his cabinet adopted this April has produced results in this regard. "Croatia is a law-based state where nobody is beyond or above the law," he said.