CRO. PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKER ATTENDS BALTIC STATES' CONFERENCE

ZAGREB, Sept 4 (Hina) - At the tenth conference of Baltic states, which was held in Greifswald, Germany, on Sept. 2-4, Croatia endorsed intensifying cooperation within the European Union and between regional initiatives. Croatia was invited to the conference as a member of the Adriatic- Ionian Initiative and was represented by parliamentary speaker Zlatko Tomcic and the chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Zdravko Tomac, the parliament said in a statement on Tuesday. The conference, which tackled civil society as a political model between vision and reality, was attended, among others, by Council of Europe president Lord Russell Johnson, German parliamentary speaker Wolfgang Thierse, and the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS) commissioner for democratic development, Helle Degn. In his address, Croatia's Tomcic supported intensifying cooperation within the EU and Europe's regional initiatives, particularly on the north-south axis. The resolutions that were adopted at the conference adopted an Adriatic-Ionian Initiative proposal to establish parliamentary cooperation between this and the CBSS initiative. (hina) ha sb