"The position of Croats in Slovenia is undefined. The (Slovene) Constitution does not recognise Croats as a national minority," Ivo Garic said.
For two years representatives of Slovene Croats have been trying to solve that issue with the Slovene government, he said. One of the key issues is how to preserve their mother tongue because there are no newspapers or media programmes in Croatian.
Garic also criticised the Croatian authorities, saying they were also to blame for the undefined position of Slovene Croats.
He added that the talks with Mesic gave him reason for optimism, stressing, however, he expected the Croatian president and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to invest more efforts to define the status of Slovene Croats.