LJUBLJANA, July 22 (Hina) - About 60 percent of Slovenia's population would support a border agreement with Croatia, the first public opinion polls have shown. A poll conducted by Ninamedia agency for the Dnevnik newspaper among 700
persons on Wednesday and Thursday, when the two countries' prime ministers made a breakthrough in negotiations on contentious issues, shows that 59.8 percent gives priority to Slovenia's exit to open sea via a corridor in Piran Bay in the northern Adriatic. The rest deem the land border more important. According to the Slovene government, the border agreement reached by the two prime ministers provides Slovenia with a territorial exit to international waters, while Croatia retains the direct sea border with Italy across a small part of its territorial waters, in the form of a triangle near the Slovene corridor to open sea. The draft of the agreement was harmonise
LJUBLJANA, July 22 (Hina) - About 60 percent of Slovenia's
population would support a border agreement with Croatia, the first
public opinion polls have shown.
A poll conducted by Ninamedia agency for the Dnevnik newspaper
among 700 persons on Wednesday and Thursday, when the two
countries' prime ministers made a breakthrough in negotiations on
contentious issues, shows that 59.8 percent gives priority to
Slovenia's exit to open sea via a corridor in Piran Bay in the
northern Adriatic. The rest deem the land border more important.
According to the Slovene government, the border agreement reached
by the two prime ministers provides Slovenia with a territorial
exit to international waters, while Croatia retains the direct sea
border with Italy across a small part of its territorial waters, in
the form of a triangle near the Slovene corridor to open sea.
The draft of the agreement was harmonised by the two countries'
foreign ministry representatives. The Slovene parliament's
foreign affairs committee will debate it on Wednesday to decide if
to forward it into parliament for ratification.
The details of the agreement remain confidential as, according to
the Slovene government's public relations office, it will be ready
for public disclosure only after being ratified by both the Slovene
and Croatian parliaments.
Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel claims the national
press was acquainted with the agreement's content at a briefing on
Thursday, but that they have nonetheless published some incorrect
information, including an "incorrect map" of the sea delineation.
Speaking about the recent developments regarding the border
agreement on his Internet home-page, Rupel says the agreement will
strengthen both Slovenia's and Croatia's statehood as borders have
been the focal point of bilateral relations in the last ten years,
after the break-up of the ex-Yugoslavia.
"Our relations ranged from idyll to rivalry, polite to very cold,
and this whole time we dealt with the border," says Rupel.
Slovenia's policy sees the agreement as historic and a big
opportunity to further relations with Croatia.
According to Rupel, there was a psychological problem "among some
people" in both countries who were unable to face the fact that
Slovenia and Croatia are two independent states separated by a
border. "Many would set up the Berlin Wall on that border, and some
would like to return to (the former) Yugoslavia, when the border was
not there," he says.
Rupel says the two countries were close to a border agreement once
in the past decade, when Zlatko Matesa was Croatia's PM.
Rupel says it will now be easier to settle the remaining open issues
with Croatia. "The basic problem was the border, and the rest of the
contentious issues can ultimately be connected with the border...
the (jointly-owned) Krsko nuclear power plant, Ljubljanska Banka's
depositors from Zagreb. It is all connected with the break-up of the
ex-Yugoslavia and its legacy."
(hina) ha