ZAGREB, March 17 (Hina) - Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader will attend an international conference on Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and NATO in Bratislava on Thursday and Friday, an official statement said on Wednesday, adding
that he would use the opportunity to hold numerous bilateral meetings.
ZAGREB, March 17 (Hina) - Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader will
attend an international conference on Europe, the Balkans, the
Caucasus and NATO in Bratislava on Thursday and Friday, an official
statement said on Wednesday, adding that he would use the opportunity
to hold numerous bilateral meetings.#L#
The conference "Towards European Enlargement: New Tasks" is held under
the auspices of Slovak PM Mikulas Dzurinda and will pool the prime
ministers of the Visegrad Group, which includes Slovakia, the Czech
Republic, Hungary and Poland, and the Vilnius Group, which includes
Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania,
Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and European Union
Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen are also expected to
attend.
Apart from Sanader the Croatian delegation will include Foreign
Minister Miomir Zuzul and Defence Minister Berislav Roncevic.
The conference will also address relations between the EU and NATO and
security in the Black Sea region.
Sanader said on Tuesday he would try to lobby for stronger support to
Croatia among the Vilnius Group given that the conference was taking
place a week before an EU summit in Brussels and three months before a
NATO summit in Istanbul.
He added that the 'open doors' policy was not enough and that Croatia
wanted something more concrete at the Istanbul summit.
The Vilnius Group was formed in May 2000. Croatia joined it a year
later. The group pools NATO entry applicants which cooperate towards
the realisation of a common goal -- transatlantic integration. The
Vilnius Group represents practical and political support to NATO in
the strengthening of European security and stability. It came into
public focus in February 2003 when, despite opposition from Germany
and France as the pillars of the EU, it resolutely supported the U.S.
in the invasion on Iraq.
Seven of the 10 Vilnius countries join NATO in May, while Croatia,
Macedonia and Albania are waiting to be invited to join.
The Visegrad Group, which gathers four Central European, former
communist countries, was formed in early 1991 in the Hungarian city of
Visegrad at a meeting of then Hungarian PM Jozsef Antall, Polish
President Lech Walesa and the president of the then Czechoslovakia,
Vaclav Havel. Initially called the Visegrad Troika, the group was the
expression of efforts to intensify cooperation with a view to drawing
closer to European integration. It was named the Visegrad Group in
1993 after Czechoslovakia broke into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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