Over the past few days Seks took part in the second world conference of parliament speakers at the United Nations. On Friday he met representatives of New York Croats behind closed doors at the Croatian Mission to the UN.
Speaking to Croatian reporters afterwards, Seks said that "according to all indicators... there's a very big chance that very, very soon the green light will be given for launching negotiations on Croatia's membership of the European Union".
"The Union showed great understanding for the moves the government is taking with a view to joining the EU."
Seks said the Croat Americans were mostly interested in the Croatian government's measures to facilitate and encourage emigrants' investment in the Croatian economy.
Speaking of the Gotovina case, Seks said the emigrants understood the fact that Croatia had initiated the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and that it was bound by constitutional law to cooperate with the UN court.
Seks said that at the 10th anniversary of Operation Storm, which in 1995 liberated parts of Croatia occupied by rebel Serbs, he and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader dismissed the parts of the indictment against Gotovina which accused "the entire Croatian state, military and police leadership". He added Croatia did not accept that Storm was a planned criminal enterprise aimed at deporting Serbs from Croatia.
Seks underlined that the only place where this could be contested was the Hague tribunal and that nobody could be above national interests, "even if he were the biggest hero of the Homeland War".
The talks also addressed the Croatian government's relationship with Croats in Bosnia. Seks told the emigrants that as a signatory to the Dayton agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, and within its constitutional and international rights and obligations Croatia "is doing what is possible" to financially assist Bosnian Croat institutions and ensure the equality of Bosnian Croats with Bosnia's two other peoples, the Serbs and the Muslims.
On the fringes of the New York conference, Seks met Slovene Parliament Speaker France Cukjati. They agreed that the chairmen of the two countries' parliamentary foreign affairs committees should arrange a meeting between the two committees to address outstanding issues between Croatia and Slovenia.
Seks visited New York to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference at which some 150 parliament speakers advocated strengthening the role of parliaments in combating terrorism, poverty and uneven development, in the control and nonproliferation of arms, and in the promotion and protection of human rights.
Participants said that parliaments must be active not only through mutual cooperation and parliamentary diplomacy, but also by becoming more engaged in negotiations in international organisations and by monitoring their activities in order to bridge the democratic divide in international relations.