BRDO KOD KRANJA, May 31 (Hina) - Croatian President Stjepan Mesic held a series of bilateral meetings on the first day of a summit of the presidents of 16 Central European countries, which started in Slovenia on Friday.
BRDO KOD KRANJA, May 31 (Hina) - Croatian President Stjepan Mesic
held a series of bilateral meetings on the first day of a summit of
the presidents of 16 Central European countries, which started in
Slovenia on Friday. #L#
Slovene diplomatic sources said that the closed-door conference,
which is held at the residential complex Brdo kod Kranja, was very
lively, focusing on concrete problems.
It was agreed that the next presidential summit be held in Austria
and the year after that in Croatia or Romania, a state secretary at
the Slovene Foreign Ministry, Ignac Golob, said after today's
plenary session of the heads of state.
"The presidents discussed the enlargement of the European Union and
NATO, and problems such as the Schengen border regime," Golob told
reporters, stressing the good organisation of the summit and the
importance Czech President Vaclav Havel and Slovene President
Milan Kucan attached to the event.
President Mesic spoke at the session about European integration
processes and the role of Central Europe in creating cultural and
political identity. Central European countries have left their
mark on the entire continent in the last decade of the second
millennium; their cultural identities were sometimes opposed but
much more often they complemented each other, Mesic said, among
other things.
Europe is at a cross-roads today and the process of integration has
reached a stage which has a profoundly political and not only
economic character, he said.
Borders within Europe are opening, changing from an element of
division into an element of integration, while minorities, misused
many times, are becoming bridges of cooperation between their
native countries and the countries they live in, Mesic said.
The Croatian president held today a meeting with Yugoslav President
Vojislav Kostunica. The two presidents will tomorrow present their
joint declaration.
Mesic also met German President Johannes Rau, Moldavian President
Vladimir Voronyin, Czech President Vaclav Havel, Bosnia's Beriz
Belkic, Poland's Alexander Kwasniewski, and Slovakia's Rudolf
Schuster.
Kucan's cabinet announced that the Slovene president would meet
Mesic tomorrow. The two presidents were to meet today, but the
meeting was postponed due to Kucan's busy schedule.
Kucan and Czech President Havel today harmonised the text of a joint
declaration in which they evaluate the character of changes in
Central Europe in the 1990s, support the strengthening of the
institutions of civil society, and warn about the still present way
of historical thinking which opens Pandora's box instead of
encouraging self-examination.
History among Central European countries must be a subject of
dialogue, not of confrontation, and it must not be used to set
conditions for membership in Euro-Atlantic organisations, reads
the document.
The summit continues on Saturday with bilateral meetings of the
heads of state at the hotel Toplice in Bled, after which the plenary
session resumes at Brdo kod Kranja. After the session, the
presidents will address reporters. The summit is also expected to
adopt a joint document focusing on the role of Central Europe in
linking its east and west and transition processes in former
communist countries.
(hina) rml