DEPUTY PM: DANUBE CHANCE TO BUILD BRIDGES OF FUTURE COOPERATION

DEPUTY PM: DANUBE CHANCE TO BUILD BRIDGES OF FUTURE COOPERATION ZAGREB, Oct 5 (Hina) - The Danube river does not give countries through which it flows only the chance to develop economically, but connects and gives them the possibility to build bridges of future cooperation, Croatia's first deputy premier said on Thursday. Deputy PM Goran Granic was speaking at the 11th, two-day conference of prime ministers from the Working Community of Danube River Basin Regions, which opened in Zagreb's Intercontinental hotel. Croatia presided the community over the past year and will turn over the task to Bulgaria's Russe province. The conference was to be opened by Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan, whom Granic excused by saying that he had lost his voice during this morning's government session and was unable to speak. "Over the past year, the Working Community showed its usefulness, and in the future will continue promoting good neighbourly relations and cooperation," Granic told representatives of some 15 Danube basin regions and regional organisations attending. He said the eastern Danube River Region was especially important for Croatia in view of last decade's Serb aggression, and "because it symbolises the suffering of the Croatian people, as well as magnificent acts of heroism." "The revival of the (region) is a Croatian government priority despite the difficult economic conditions," said Granic. He reminded the government had prepared a special law, to be adopted by year's end, on the economic development of the eastern-most town of Vukovar, heavily devastated in the early 1990s Serb aggression. Croatia's Deputy Foreign Minister Vesna Cvjetkovic-Kurelec, presiding over the working part of the conference, read a report on Croatia's objectives during its one-year presidency of the community. The principal objectives Croatia had set were to consolidate and strengthen cooperation in view of jointly contributing to significant projects, to find the most effective way of adjusting the working community to the challenges of the new millennium, and to establish or intensify the community's cooperation with all relevant institutions and initiatives in the region. A special objective had been to gradually involve representatives from two Danube basin regions, Croatia's Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem counties, in the work of the community, thus giving them a chance to come closer to Europe via the river. Cvjetkovic-Kurelec said the objectives had been achieved, as testified by the numerous activities undertaken over the course of the year, and the fact that the first economic and cultural forums were held in that period. Both were held on Tuesday and Wednesday, the economic in the eastern town of Osijek, and the cultural in Ilok, Osijek, and Vukovar. "The working community... contributes to... integration into European structures and overall European cooperation," she said, adding that improving its functioning in the future required "drafting a development concept." During the working part of the conference, speakers from a variety of regions will address possibilities of advancing economic, cultural, and other cooperation, and point to the need of making the Danube navigable again. The conference wraps up on Friday with the adoption of a joint statement. (hina) ha