ZAGREB, Sept 24 (Hina) - Croatia's President Stjepan Mesic, who is expected to address the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on Thursday, will be the first Croatian head of state to deliver a speech before that body. Two days
prior to Mesic's speech, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly will discontinue the monitoring over Croatia's efforts to fulfil the assumed commitments. Mesic received an invitation from the Assembly to address deputies of 41 Council of Europe member-states during the autumn session from 25 to 29 September. "This is the first official visit of Croatia's President to the Council of Europe since the country won its independence," Mesic's advisor on foreign affairs, Stanko Nick, told a news conference last Friday. Nick described the fact that the Parliamentary Assembly had waited so long for when it should extend invitation as symptomatic. CoE member-countries' top
ZAGREB, Sept 24 (Hina) - Croatia's President Stjepan Mesic, who is
expected to address the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on
Thursday, will be the first Croatian head of state to deliver a
speech before that body.
Two days prior to Mesic's speech, the Council of Europe
Parliamentary Assembly will discontinue the monitoring over
Croatia's efforts to fulfil the assumed commitments.
Mesic received an invitation from the Assembly to address deputies
of 41 Council of Europe member-states during the autumn session
from 25 to 29 September.
"This is the first official visit of Croatia's President to the
Council of Europe since the country won its independence," Mesic's
advisor on foreign affairs, Stanko Nick, told a news conference
last Friday. Nick described the fact that the Parliamentary
Assembly had waited so long for when it should extend invitation as
symptomatic.
CoE member-countries' top officials receive invitations from the
Assembly to address parliamentarians in the European Palace in
Strasbourg and answer their questions, unless it is assessed that
their conduct in fields important for the CoE such as the protection
of human rights and progress in democracy is unsatisfactory.
Besides giving the speech in Strasbourg on September 28 about the
current interior and foreign policy situation in Croatia, Mesic
will meet the Council of Europe's and European Court for Human
Rights' senior officials.
Besides Mesic, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Italian state secretary for
foreign affairs who chairs the CoE ministerial committee, Umberto
Ranieri, have also been invited.
On Tuesday the Parliamentary Assembly is expected to withdraw the
decision on the CoE monitoring in Croatia, as Zagreb has met almost
all of the 21 commitments it assumed when it was admitted to the CoE
on 6 November 1996.
The obligations referred to the revocation of discriminatory laws
on refugee returns, the improvement of cooperation with the Hague-
based International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia
(ICTY), the transformation of the Croatian Television into a public
institution and amendments to the Constitutional Law on ethnic
communities' and national minorities' rights.
The autumn session, in which Croatia's parliamentary delegation
will take part, should focus as well on a discussion on Sunday's
presidential, parliamentary and local elections in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. Before the start of the vote, the CoE
assessed that the elections would obviously not be free and fair.
(hina) ms