The statement said it was entirely inappropriate for the pre-election situation in Slovenia to spill over onto Croatian territory.
The ministry added it stuck to an agreement reached with the Slovene Foreign Ministry in which both sides committed themselves to investing efforts necessary to avert such incidents.
Secovje-Plovanija, one of the busiest border crossings on the Istrian peninsula, was closed between noon and 1330 hours because of Joras and three Slovene demonstrators. The closure caused a traffic blockade lasting several hours and a line of tourist vehicles waiting to leave Croatia stretching dozens of kilometres.
The demonstrators blocked the border crossing in response to fines three of them were given by the magistrate's judge in Croatia's Umag yesterday after they illegally entered Croatian territory, avoiding customs while carrying construction material for Joras.
According to a Slovene journalist, the Slovene demonstrators blocked traffic flow with several four-metre logs. He said the Slovene border police intervened only after hours of waiting and a 30-kilometre line of cars prompted tourists leaving Croatia to exit their cars to remove the logs themselves. After the police intervened to avoid an incident between foreign tourists and the demonstrators, the latter left the scene.
Joras told Slovene Radio his protest was aimed at having the village he resided in become part of Slovenia's territory. He said he discontinued the protest when he was promised that Slovene Interior Minister Rado Bohinc would receive him on Monday.
Joras is a resident of Mlini, a village in the Croatian municipality of Buje close to the Plovanija-Secovje border crossing. For several years now, usually around elections or national holidays, he has been claiming that he does not recognise Croatian sovereignty in villages south of the Dragonja river and the checkpoint set up by Croatian police in 1991.
Joras will run in Slovenia's parliamentary elections later this year on the list of the Slovene Popular Party, which until recently was in Prime Minister Anton Rop's coalition but fared poorly at elections for the European Parliament held in May.