ZAGREB, Jan 29(Hina) - Chile will help Croatia become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar said after talks with Croatian President Stjepan Mesic in Zagreb on Thursday.
ZAGREB, Jan 29(Hina) - Chile will help Croatia become a non-permanent
member of the UN Security Council, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos
Escobar said after talks with Croatian President Stjepan Mesic in
Zagreb on Thursday.#L#
Croatia intends to apply for non-permanent membership of the Security
Council in 2007-2008, and Chile will take over the rotating presidency
of the Security Council by the end of this year.
"Chile will help Croatia join the Security Council," Escobar said
after the meeting.
The two presidents are agreed that the Croat community in Chile is a
bridge which brings the two distant countries closer to one another.
Lagos Escobar is the first Latin American president visiting Croatia,
a fact he said he was very proud of. He added that his visit was also
a commitment to help establish closer ties between Croatia and Latin
America.
"The door to friendship and cooperation between Croatia and Chile was
opened long ago, and in the meantime a basic framework for the
development of bilateral relations has been set," Mesic said. He added
that there were no outstanding political issues between the two
countries and voiced satisfaction with their cooperation in the areas
of science, culture and education.
However, economic relations are lagging behind, with trade amounting
to a mere four million US dollars and minimum presence of Croatian
products on the Chilean market. Mesic believes that Adriatic ports can
be a door to Central and South-East European markets for Chile and
other Latin American countries.
Both countries are agreed that the U.N.'s role and mechanisms should
be strengthened and support the process of global liberalisation and
economic integration, the two presidents said, with President Mesic
warning about the need to avoid dependence in the process.
(Hina) rml sb