The summit will focus on Montenegro's admission to the SEECP, the establishment of a Council for Regional Cooperation and the appointment of Hido Biscevic, a state secretary at the Croatian Foreign Ministry, to the post of SEECP Secretary-General.
"The founding of those institutions does not mean the creation of a new Yugoslavia... the Council and the secretary-general are instruments for the settlement of the remaining outstanding issues in the region," the official said, dismissing criticisms that the institutional consolidation of the SEECP was an introduction to the restoration of the former Yugoslav federation.
"Neuralgic spots" in Southeast Europe are Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as Turkey, Greece, and the status of the Albanian minority in Macedonia, the official said.
These and other issues will be on the agenda of the Zagreb summit, which will gather heads of state, prime ministers and ministers from ten SEECP member-countries.
SEECP summits are traditionally held every May, and the upcoming event will be the largest so far. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU chair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Parliament President Hans Gert Poettering, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, Assistant US Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, and senior officials of the OSCE, NATO and the Council of Europe have announced their attendance.
It is still not known who will be representing Serbia, which is amidst political turmoil over the formation of a new government, three and a half months after parliamentary elections.
The participation of a representative from Belgrade is particularly interesting in light of debates on the future status of Kosovo, which the authorities in Zagreb believe should be defined in line with the plan by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
The government official recalled that Croatia's "two-track" foreign policy, oriented both to the region and the EU and NATO, was continuing and that the government was fully engaged in accession negotiations with the EU, as well as in preparations for NATO membership.
Croatia is ready to open all the remaining negotiating chapters by the end of 2007, and close them by the end of 2008. However, achieving that goal requires a certain pace of work on the part of the European Commission, which so far has not been the best possible, the official said.
As for NATO, the government official reiterated that Zagreb expected a membership invitation at the NATO summit to be held in Bucharest on April 2-4, 2008.