Croatia is not a big power but it has great experience in post-war reconciliation which it can use to help bring about peace in the Middle East, Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said after talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Tuesday.
Josipovic visited Ramallah as part of his official visit to Israel to meet for talks with Palestinian leaders on their views of the situation in the region.
"For me and my delegation, it is very important also to hear Palestinian views of the situation in the region and the peace process. Croatia is a Mediterranean country and it is in our interest that this region in general should be a region of peace, stability and democracy," Josipovic told a press conference after meeting Abbas.
"We strongly support negotiations as the only way of reaching a final and appropriate agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples," he added.
Speaking of how Croatia could contribute to the Middle East peace process, Josipovic said that "Croatia is not a big power, but it has a lot of experience."
"We had a bloody war, and after the war we reached an agreement with our neighbours. We have experience in reconciliation and in promoting peace and stability. Our experience in how to arrange relations with neighbours, in my opinion, is worth being discussed," the Croatian president said.
Josipovic called for closer cooperation between Croatia and the Palestinian Authority, especially economic cooperation which hardly exists at all.
Abbas said that they had discussed ways of promoting cooperation in the areas of culture, education and health, and that he had informed Josipovic about Palestinian views of the situation in the region, blaming the Israeli government for the deterioration in the peace process.
Israel is changing the facts on the ground by building settlements, building the wall, taking away Palestinian land. Such behaviour leads to a solution for one state and not two, which we find unacceptable, the Palestinian president said.
When asked by a reporter about Croatia's relations with Israel, Abbas welcomed good relations between Croatia and the Israelis and good relations between Croatia and the Palestinians. If Croatia has good relations both with us and with Israel, that makes its voice in international relations stronger, he added.
Josipovic said that Croatia had decided to raise the level of its relations with the Palestinian Authority by appointing the Croatian ambassador to Egypt as its special representative to the Palestinian Authority.
