The EU foreign ministers said in a statement they adopted at their regular monthly meeting that they urged Croatia to continue with the intensified implementation of its action plan aimed at the solution of the case of the runaway general Ante Gotovina. They also commit themselves to discuss again in July the opening of membership talks with Croatia.
The next session of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers is scheduled for 18 July in Brussels.
Before they adopted the conclusions, the EU ministers were today briefed by Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn on yesterday's session of the EU Task Force for Croatia.
The EU ministerial council welcomed the improvement in Croatia's cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal, which was stated in a letter the tribunal's Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, forwarded to the EU Presidency.
"The Council noted with satisfaction this new element and encourages Croatia to continue to intensify its efforts on this track. It commits itself to continue the examination of this issue in July," the statement said.
In her letter of 7 June 2005 to the EU Presidency, the tribunal's chief prosecutor established that with the implementation of its action plan Croatia had made headway on the path that can lead to the full cooperation with the tribunal and added that three or four months were needed to see whether these new efforts had produced concrete results.
The Council also reiterated its previous conclusion that a bilateral intergovernmental conference for launching the entry talks would be convened as soon as it could be established that Croatia was fully cooperating with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The Council also drew up conclusions for the summit of the European bloc, scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Brussels.
According to diplomatic sources, the EU leaders will refer to the continuation of the EU enlargement in a sentence in which they will confirm their commitment to the decisions from December 2004. At their summit last December, the EU leaders decided on opening of membership talks with Croatia and Turkey provided that the former would fully cooperate with the ICTY and that the latter would recognise Cyprus.