Croatia is interested in said cooperation and progress regardless of the fact that it is joining the EU on July 1, or perhaps because of it, she told the press on the fringes of a ministerial meeting of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) countries.
An SEECP summit was to be held over the weekend but Macedonia cancelled it after the presidents of Croatia and Albania said they would not attend because Kosovo was not invited as a result of Serbia's insistence. Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina were also against Kosovo's attendance.
A discussion on whether the ministerial meeting would be held in the wake of the cancellation was held until yesterday. Pusic contacted her counterparts from Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo and they agreed that Kosovo representatives would take part in all parts of the ministerial meeting and that the seats at the table would be marked as usual.
Pusic said the meeting was important because it was "a sort of first step, the first test of the implementation of the part of the Belgrade-Pristina agreement which talks about regional cooperation."
Croatia supports the implementation of the agreement, so that Serbia can be given a date for the start of EU accession negotiations. Croatia believes Macedonia should be given a date for the start of the negotiations and that Kosovo should sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, said Pusic.
She held separate meetings with foreign ministers Nikola Poposki of Macedonia, Kristian Vigenin of Bulgaria and Ivan Mrkic of Serbia as well as with Albanian Deputy Foreign Minister Edith Harxi. They discussed regional cooperation and the region's European prospects.
Pusic and Mrkic also talked about her visit to Belgrade in the second half of June.
Pusic and Poposki signed a Euro-Atlantic Partnership Agreement whereby Croatia would share its knowledge and experience from the NATO and EU accession processes.