BELGRADE, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Slovenia denied on Monday that it has delayed Croatia's EU membership talks owing to its dispute with Croatia over border issues.
Croatia's EU membership negotiations are running "relatively slowly because the country has problems meeting the bloc's demands," not because Slovenia is blocking its progress, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement said that Slovenia would continue to support Croatia's EU accession, but could not ignore Croatia's attempts to include "unusual demands" and "unilateral solutions" of open issues with Slovenia into its negotiation with the EU.
"No European government would allow a candidate country to include in its membership negotiation solutions which would harm an EU member state," it said.
At last week's meeting with the Croatian negotiators in Brussels, Slovenia refused to back the opening of chapters covering regional policy; justice, freedom and security issues; the environment; and the free circulation of capital.
As a result, Croatia's chief EU negotiator Vladimir Drobnjak accused Slovenia of blocking Zagreb from taking a new step towards joining the bloc, and insisted that bilateral issues be kept out of negotiations.
Slovenia and Croatia, which are geographic neighbors and former Yugoslav republics, have not been able to completely draw their land and sea borders since their independence in 1991.
Since Croatia began negotiations on joining the European Union in October 2005, it has opened 21 chapters, of which four are now closed. Technical negotiations on all 35 chapters are expected to be wrapped up by the end of 2009.
Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said Monday that Slovenia was willing to let Croatia open certain negotiating chapters, but it insisted on guarantees that Croatia would "make the necessary corrections" by the time the negotiating chapters were closed, the Slovenian news agency STA reported.
"Croatia knows exactly that our proposal was to avoid vagueness and misunderstanding ... But there was no real response: Croatia placed greater trust in political pressure, lobbying etc. thinking that would be enough," Rupel told reporters in Marseilles, where he is attending a meeting with his EU counterparts.
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