The meeting has not been officially convened yet and it is expected that it will be definitely confirmed on Thursday, after a session of the COREPER, a body made up of the EU ambassadors in charge of preparing meetings of the Council of Ministers.
The EU set up the task force for Croatia in March this year after Croatia's EU entry talks were postponed. The group initially consisted of representatives of Great Britain, Luxembourg and Austria, who were later joined by Finland, which is to take over EU presidency in the second half of 2006. The task force also includes EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.
The upcoming meeting of the task force will be held at the ministerial level. It is expected that the chief prosecutor of the Hague war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, will attend the meeting. Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in Strasbourg on Tuesday he would be at the helm of a Croatian delegation at the meeting. If the EU task force finds, after hearing Del Ponte and the Croatian delegation, that Zagreb is fully cooperating with the Hague tribunal, the Council of Ministers will have to decide when the talks will start. At present nobody wants to speculate whether Croatia's EU entry talks could start on the same day, October 3, or at a later date.