EU-Balkan congres ondanks conflict Servie en Kosovo toch van start (en)
The Croatian prime minister confirmed on Tuesday (16 March) that an EU-Balkan summit will take place in Brdo, Slovenia, this Saturday, despite a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo which threatened to derail the event.
"The conference will take place, we are still working on organisational details, but we believe there are no obstacles for it to be held," Croatian premier Jadranka Kosor told journalists in Zagreb, AFP reports.
The participation of Serbian and Kosovar officials is still unclear however, as they remain at odds over the way Kosovo should be represented.
Belgrade does not recognise the independence of its former province and systematically boycotts any international events where Kosovar officials are present as state delegates, rather than under the flag of the provisional UN administration in the country, Unmik.
Meanwhile, Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has said he would attend the summit only as a representative of an independent nation.
"I am an optimist and I believe that everything will be arranged and that all those whom we, as organisers, are expecting at this conference will be there," Croatia's Ms Kosor said.
One solution,as reported by WAZ.EUobserver, would be to declare the summit an informal gathering of the "political representatives of the region." Officially, there would be no country names, only the names of politicians.
This would also help solve the question of Macedonia's title for the summit.
Under official EU terminology, the country is referred to as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. EU member Greece rejects the name Macedonia arguing that it owns the name, which denotes one of its northern provinces.
One EU diplomat jokingly suggested the protocol problems reflected "what the Balkans can contribute to Europe: disagreement, dispute, childish behaviour and a lack of readiness to compromise."
Of the six former Yugoslav republics - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia - only the latter has joined the European Union, while neighbouring Croatia hopes to do so by 2012.
Slovenia and Croatia managed to bury the hatchet of their own bilateral dispute over a maritime border just last year. As an EU member with veto-right over enlargement issues, Ljubljana had blocked Zagreb's negotiations with Brussels until September 2009, when a solution was found.