The head of Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Nikola Dobroslavic, and the chairman of the county branch of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party and member of Parliament, Branko Bacic, asked the government on Friday whether it had defined a political and legal platform for a durable resolution of the sea border issue with Montenegro.
The two were speaking to the press in Dubrovnik after Montenegro announced that it would grant concessions for oil and gas exploration in the southern Adriatic. They recalled that on 10 December 2002 the governments of Croatia and the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) had signed a protocol on an interim border regime along the southern border between the two countries and that the protocol had expired seven months ago.
Dobroslavic said that the border between Croatia and Montenegro should run down the middle of Boka Kotorska Bay, in which case Croatia would have over 250 square kilometres of territorial sea and over 1,000 square kilometres of continental shelf.
The two officials said that Montenegro's plan to drill for oil 50 nautical miles south of Dubrovnik required a public debate and an environmental impact study.
