Croatia thinks that Serbia should be given a time frame for opening accession negotiations with the European Union, the Croatian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Vesna Pusic, told the press in Brussels on Monday after a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council.
Pusic said that neighbouring countries should support each other on their path to EU membership and that apart from meeting the high criteria "positive political messages" were also important. "If you want to help pro-European and pro-reform political elites, positive political messages always help," she noted.
Commenting on the latest statements by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, that if Serbia and Croatia were to develop their relations, justice should first be served to victims of the 1995 Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm, Pusic said that this should apply to all sides.
"Justice should be served to all sides and the only way to do it is to observe the institutional procedure. There can be no personal judgements and international institutions cannot be disrespected. We have exercised respect for international institutions and their procedures for years, and that's the only way," Pusic said.
"Croatia has spent 12 years in the European reform process. It has to communicate with all countries in the region and it understands the importance of that," she added.
Speaking of the process of ratification of Croatia's EU accession treaty, Pusic said that by the end of the year the treaty would have been ratified by at least 20 EU member states and that possibly only two countries would not do so before the end of March.
The Foreign Affairs Council discussed the situation in Syria, Egypt and Libya as well as the Western Balkans, with special emphasis on Serbia and Kosovo.
