PRESS CONFERENCE

Sarajevo, June 1, 2007

Press Release

The 9th regular annual Ministerial Meeting of the Adriatic and Ionian Council took place in Sarajevo, on June 1, 2007. After the meeting was closed, the press was addressed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina Sven Alkalaj, the Head of Delegation of the Republic of Croatia Pjer Šimunović - Assistant Minister at the Directorate for International Organisations and Security of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integrations of the Republic of Croatia and the National Coordinator for BiH Ambassador Zlatko Dizdarević.

Minister Alkalaj thanked to all attendants of the meeting as well as to those who participated in series of round tables organized in Sarajevo in the previous, one-year period. Minister Alkalaj briefly presented main characteristics of the Sarajevo Declaration, which was approved as the final document of BiH chairmanship. He highlighted that getting to a common conclusion on formation of the Initiative’s Secretariat represents a special success and said it would help to better coordinate and implement activities more efficiently. Minister Alkalaj also stressed out that the attendants agreed to reduce the number of topics that the Initiative will discuss in the future in order to increase efficiency.

The Head of Delegation of the Republic of Croatia Šimunović said that during BiH chairmanship, Bosnia and Herzegovina has imposed high standards, which oblige the Republic of Croatia to invest a lot of efforts in order to keep those activities at the same level. Šimunović said that the chairmanship and the ways in which all activities were organized justified the most recent diplomatic success of Bosnia and Herzegovina and  congratulated to Sarajevo on being selected for the seat of the Regional Cooperation Council Secretariat as well as on selection of BiH in the membership of the United Nations Organization Human Rights Council.

Participants of the press conference answered several press questions.