"Responding to a question by National Party (SNS) deputy Bogdan Barovic, the future foreign minister said that Slovenia would support the start of negotiations with Croatia at an EU summit in December because any conditions for Slovenia's support would not be well accepted," the newspaper said.
With regard to relations with Croatia, Rupel spoke of "a new start" and the need to refrain from confrontation and to defuse the tension, but during a debate he also said that he did not have "a magic wand" and that "methods used by the Croatian side are unacceptable".
Rupel said that Croatia supported arbitration as a way of removing the border dispute with Slovenia from the process of its integration with the European Union "rather than acknowledge that the Drnovsek-Racan agreement is 'the minimum of the minimum' for Slovenia, although this is an invalid act because it has not been ratified by Croatia," Vecer said.
If negotiations on the border between Croatia and Slovenia reopened, the issue of the border on the river Mura would be raised again, as has already been done by Hungarian minority deputy Marija Pozsonec, the newspaper said.