Slovenia and Croatia fail to reach agreement on border dispute

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Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and Slovene Prime Minister Borut Pahor met yesterday  (Tues) in Mokrice, Slovenia to discuss the two countries' border dispute.
The two prime ministers also talked about Slovenia's blocking of the opening of new chapters in Croatia's EU accession negotiations and Slovenia's possible attempt to block Croatia's entry into NATO. No agreement was reached.
Their failure to reach agreement raised the question of the future enlargement of the European Union and of NATO, according to a leading member of the European Parliament speaking in Zagreb yesterday.
MEP Richard Howitt, the British Labour Party spokesman in the European Parliament for foreign affairs and enlargement, said Croatia could make a legally-binding commitment not to veto future enlargement itself as a positive response to Slovenia's negative approach to Croatia's accession to the European Union.
Howitt made his proposal at the ninth meeting of the European-Croatian Joint Parliamentary Committee in Zagreb.
He said: "If Croatia continues to insist on an exclusively legal solution at The Hague and Slovenia on a political solution through the European Union, Croatia's EU accession could be delayed by the five years it would take to get a final ruling by the International Court. No EU member state should be allowed to use a bilateral issue to block another country's accession."
Responding to efforts in Slovenia to collect 40,000 signatures to require a referendum on Croatia's entry into NATO, Howitt said it was just another example of the referendum madness blocking EU enlargement.
Howitt added:  "An internal European dispute at the time when US President Obama attends his first NATO summit in April will send exactly the wrong signal about our collective ability to secure peace and security in the world."