Croatia, Slovenia dash hopes for quick end to dispute 

The European Commission said it regretted that Croatia and Slovenia had failed to make progress in talks on the settlement of their border row, underlining that it was a bilateral issue. 

The talks had progressed well since January and there remained only a limited number of points to be settled, but the two sides yesterday failed to make progress on those points, says a brief statement issued by Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn’s office. Rehn will now report to the current Czech and future Swedish EU Presidencies, it adds. 

In the meantime, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader presented in his new proposals for solving the border issue and lifting Slovenia's blockade of Croatia's accession negotiations with the EU. 

"Croatia adopted the proposal by [...] Rehn and the EU troika in parliament several weeks ago. There are attempts, primarily by Slovenia, to change the proposal at Croatia's expense, although [the proposal] was already a compromise," Sanader told a conference, organised by the Hanns Seidel Foundation, adding that his country "won't agree to that". 

Sanader outlined his country's new proposals and announced that he would also present them to the EU leaders from his political family, the European People's Party (EPP). 

Basically, Sanader is proposing that the parliaments of both countries, as well as the legal services of the Commission and the Council, take a position on whether documents presented to the Commission in its mediator’s role “prejudge the borders”. 

Slovenia claims that Croatia has provided documents that "prejudge" the border dispute. He added that in the event that the legal services consider this to be the case, then his country would be ready to withdraw them. 

Sanader said Croatia had shown restraint and that he did not want to increase the heat until the European Parliament elections were over. 

"Now that the elections are over, I will definitely insist on the fact that Europe cannot be or not be, stand or fall on the issue of the Slovenian blockade of Croatia's negotiations. That's absolutely unacceptable, it's not what the EU founders wanted, to take a bilateral issue as a lever for realising one's own egotistical interest. Croatia guarantees that it will not prejudge a solution to the border issue, but Slovenia will definitely not either," said Sanader, quoted by the Croatian agency HINA. 

For his part, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor expressed regret at Croatia's refusal to accept Slovenian amendments to Rehn's compromise proposal, which he formulated in late March. His foreign minister, Samuel Zbogar, said that it was Croatia which had abandoned the negotiating process. 

The European Commission appears to be blaming both sides, deploring that "the two sides" failed to make progress. 

(With agencies.)