Zagreb, July 25 (Hina) - During the initialling of the draft agreement between Croatia and Slovenia, the Croatian government assumed that the resolution of open issues with its neighbours is of the strategic importance for Croatia,
Prime Minister Ivica Racan said on Wednesday. "The unsettled situation on borders is a potential crisis area and, as such, it is unsustainable, PM Racan said at e news conference which focused on the recently initialled border treaty between Zagreb and Ljubljana. Racan added that Croatia's path towards the European Union went through Slovenia and tourists arrived in Croatia via that country. He added that 99 percent of the land frontier was solved while the former authorities were in power, and his cabinet's task was to reach agreement on the remaining one percent of the border on the land and on the border on the sea. "On the sea Croatia has lost in terms of the
Zagreb, July 25 (Hina) - During the initialling of the draft
agreement between Croatia and Slovenia, the Croatian government
assumed that the resolution of open issues with its neighbours is of
the strategic importance for Croatia, Prime Minister Ivica Racan
said on Wednesday.
"The unsettled situation on borders is a potential crisis area and,
as such, it is unsustainable, PM Racan said at e news conference
which focused on the recently initialled border treaty between
Zagreb and Ljubljana.
Racan added that Croatia's path towards the European Union went
through Slovenia and tourists arrived in Croatia via that country.
He added that 99 percent of the land frontier was solved while the
former authorities were in power, and his cabinet's task was to
reach agreement on the remaining one percent of the border on the
land and on the border on the sea.
"On the sea Croatia has lost in terms of the status, but it has lost
nothing in terms of contents," the PM Racan explained adding that
Croatia ceded a part of its territorial sea to an international
corridor, while Ljubljana had asked for its own territorial
corridor.
Premier said this international corridor had already coincided
with a corridor envisaged in a memorandum on the free navigation
signed last year by Italy, Slovenia and Croatia.
He stressed that the agreement finally solved the determination of
the boundary-line between territorial waters of Croatia and
Slovenia.
Asked by reporters to explain political reasons for such
demarcation under which the Slovene port of Kopar became a
permanent rival to the biggest Croatia seaport of Rijeka, Racan
said he did not think that this would be a hindrance for Rijeka and
added that he was expecting the cooperation between these two
harbours.
He resolutely dismissed a possibility that this precedent would be
used for the settlement of the issue of Prevlaka (the southernmost
Croatian peninsula bordering with Montenegro), saying that for
Croatia "Prevlaka is a security rather than territorial issue."
(hina) ms