G8 COUNTRIES' AMBASSADORS HOLD TALKS WITH CROATIAN OFFICIAL

ZAGREB, April 8 (Hina) - Croatia's Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan Simonovic on Tuesday received ambassadors of G8 countries, the foreign ministry reported. #L# The purpose of the Zagreb meeting, held at the request of French Ambassador Francis Bellanger, whose country is currently chairing G8, was to encourage Croatia to ratify the remaining six UN conventions which are of key importance in countering terrorism. The G8 group consists of the seven most developed countries in the world, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan plus Russia. Simonovic thanked the G8 countries' diplomats for their interest in seeing Croatia joining the remaining UN conventions on countering terrorism as soon as possible, and stressed that Croatia, as a tourism-oriented country, was very interested in the fight against terrorism and its global uprooting. He recalled that the Croatian government had set up a task force consisting of ministers whose duty was to implement UN Security Resolution 1373 on the struggle against terrorism. The Croatian official added that the UN convention on preventing the financing of terrorism would be ratified by Sabor before this summer. The process of ratifying other four conventions and a protocol has been initiated by competent ministries and those documents are likely to be ratified by the Croatian parliament until the end of this year. (hina) ms sb