IRISH PARLIAMENT DELEGATION
VISITS CROATIAN PARLIAMENT

Deputy Prime Minister Mate Granic met with the delegation
of the Irish parliament visiting Croatia Tuesday when he informed
the delegation on the political and economic situation in Croatia.
The Irish parliament delegation, led by the chairman of the
Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael Woods, has expressed full
support for Croatia's efforts to become a full member of the
European Union and offered assistance in achieving this goal.
Croatian parliament president Zlatko Tomcic and the Irish guests
also discussed ways of strengthening cooperation between the
two parliaments
 

Eating in two countries at once
 

By Marko Kovac
BBC, Bregana
Eat lunch in Croatia, then freshen up in SloveniaThere is one thing that probably makes Restaurant Kalin unique.
Not its renowned mushroom steak, nor its dining hall hung with hunting trophies - but its location bang on an international border.  At the family-run restaurant in the village of Bregana, you eat your meal in one country - Croatia - and cross into another - Slovenia - to visit the toilet. Both countries used to be part of Yugoslavia, a country with six constituent republics, where internal borders didn't matter much. Now, eight years after the country's bloody disintegration, Croatian and Slovenian diplomats are still trying to settle a host of arguments, including border delimitation. Restaurant owner Blazenka Kalin rolls her eyes at the mention of the border dispute.
The restaurant's cash till is on the Slovenian side of the border, so her company has to be registered in Slovenia.
This means she's also forced to follow strict Slovenian inspection regulations. Plainclothes guards She is bitter about what she regards as "political wrangling" over the border, and says she has lost hope of a diplomatic solution.  Ironically, many of the politicians she talks about are among her customers - Kalin is popular with movers and shakers in both Zagreb and Ljubljana. When I step outside Kalin into Slovenia, I cannot see anything to stop me walking over a bridge into Croatia. Piran Bay is the site of another border disputeThere are no visible guards, no ramps, no passport control, and no clear markings. But, as I approach the invisible borderline, two men in dark glasses approach me - Slovenian policemen in civilian clothes. They suspiciously check my documents and warn me not to cross the border without a special pass, introduced to make life easier for those who migrate across every day.  Back in the busy centre of Zagreb, I meet a Croatian Government border expert, who wishes to remain anonymous. He says there is no political will to resolve the dispute. "Diplomatic teams can not negotiate if heads of state refuse to compromise", he says. The problem with the land border is linked to another one regarding sea border in the disputed Adriatic bay of Piran. On this point politicians in both countries have refused to budge for years.
EU pressure International relations analyst Davor Gjenero says diplomats should look to European models of trans-border co-operation between regions for a solution. Ivana has an unusual school runSlovenia will most probably join the European Union next year, while Croatia eagerly awaits the start of negotiations for membership.
Brussels expects issues like this to be resolved as soon as possible. When I return to Kalin's border crossing, it is business as usual. The red Volkswagen used by the Slovenian police still emits walkie-talkie sounds as policemen stop Croatia-born Ivana Grgic. She is crossing the border to Slovenia from Croatia, where her son is attending school.
Only after police have checked her pass is she free to go.  "When we lived in Yugoslavia, there was no need for this kind of nonsense", she says, shaking her head while showing me her special border documents. The dispute continues, with no sign of resolution.


Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2987376.stm

Adrese nasih crkava i klubova u Detroitu?

 
 Zovem se Dubravko Vukmirovic, imam 24 godine i trenutno sam u Detroitu. Dali
 mi mozete napisati adrese nasih crkava i klubova u Detroitu?
 Ako biste bili toliko ljubazni da mi napisete ako znate mailove od ljudi koji
 se bave kompjuterima ili imaju kontakt sa kompjuterima. Trenutno radim u Hrvatskoj
 kao sistem administrator.
 
 S postovanjem
 Dubravko Vukmirovic
 
Dobar dan

Hvala na brzom odgovoru.
Bio bi Vam zahvalan kada biste stavili pismo na CROWN listu.

Saljem Vam poslovnu biografiju.

Puno hvala na pomoci i svaka cast na CROWN projektu, samo napred.

Pozdrav Dubravko
dubravko.vukmirovic@zg.tel.hr

PRIVATE ENTREPRENEUR OFFERS
10 PERCENT HIGHER BID FOR INA
 

The round table organised to debate the privatisation of the
Croatian oil company INA Wednesday failed to gather more than
10 participants. Vesna Skare Ozbolt of the Democratic Centre
presented the views of her party, the Croatian Democratic union,
the Croatian Social Liberal Party and the Croatian Party of
Rights in their demand that the government halt the sale of
the company to MOL. Private entrepreneur Zvonko Zubak called
upon all to prevent the privatisation of the company and asked
that it be sold to Croatian citizens. He reiterated his bid
for the purchase of the company, which he claims is priced at
10 percent higher than the bid submitted by MOL. As the new
owner, he promised job for all present employees, a pay raise
of 20 percent and that 5 percent of the company's earning would
go to charity over the next 50 years. He also said he would
give the government a loan to purchase 25 percent of MOL or
OMV shares.

Croatia and Israel victims of similar intolerance
 

Victims of a common intolerance by Vitomir Miles Raguz
Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2003


President Moshe Katsav's weekend visit to Croatia makes him the first senior Israeli leader to visit the country since it gained independence 12 years ago. The wait is not surprising given Croatia's World War Two record as well as the controversial writings about the Holocaust by Croatia's founder Franjo Tudjman.

But Zagreb has a new leadership now, and its wartime history is being deconstructed in a new light. Katsav and his counterpart, President Stipe Mesic, are scheduled to spend three days together, with the itinerary that includes a visit to the Jasenovac memorial and a tour of the ancient city of Dubrovnik, home to the second-oldest synagogue in Europe.

One has to wonder whether in their talks the two leaders will have moved from the troubled past to a present in which Israel and Croatia share a common predicament.

By now a strong case has been made that the European Left is intolerant of Israel, to some bordering on anti-Semitic. But Israelis are not the only people to face the wrath of the internationalist elite in Brussels. Croats remain at a loss to explain their exclusion from the European mainstream by Left-led Brussels. Zagreb's applications for EU and NATO membership continue to be fobbed off regularly by new conditions.

Croatia certainly deserves candidate status in both organizations. It has earned entry by managing its economy admirably during the double transition to privatization and from war with virtually no international assistance. Moreover, it should be rewarded for ending the catastrophe in Bosnia in 1995, and saving the country's Muslim population when Brussels was powerless.

But at the November 2002 Prague summit NATO humiliated Croatia by placing it on a waiting list for membership, saying that Croatia needed to further democratize and upgrade its army. Military experts know, however, that Croatia and Slovenia are the only two transition countries whose armies meet Western standards of readiness. On the issue of democracy, Croatia's top leaders, Stipe Mesic and Prime Minister Ivica Racan, are usually heralded in the West as prime examples of democracy. Yet this reality evaporates at invitation time.

Why is the European Left so cold toward Croatia? To the big powers it is a strategically irrelevant country. And, like Israel, Croatia has no allies in today's Europe.

Ideological issues come into play as well. Israel is despised for rejecting its socialist Kibbutz paradise roots. Similarly, Croatia is viewed as having betrayed the utopian ideal of Yugoslavia, once revered by the Left as the epitome of modern socialism and worker self-management.

Internal criticism also plays a role. Israel's left-leaning elite indulges in extensive self-criticism that serves to provide fodder to anti-Israel partisans abroad. Croatia has a similar problem. Zagreb's elite has taken the concept of the proverbial self-hating Jew to unseen heights. Trashing the young state abroad has become a badge of honor in high society.

Then there is the issue of guilt. The Left's uneasy feeling that its early support for Israel allowed it to become too strong is similar to its uneasiness over seeing Croatia move quickly ahead of its eastern neighbors. That's because EU policy toward the Balkans calls for no winners, no losers. To the European Left Croatia is a winner; something pointed out by Greek foreign minister George Papandreou during his January stopover in Zagreb. And since the adjoining states are not winners, Croatia is expected to wait in line with the slower bunch.

Friends of Israel point to notoriously Arabist-leaning foreign offices of certain European governments. In the Balkans the "foreign office" plays a similarly biased role. Since 1993, it has favored a policy of compensating the Muslim community in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the expense of the Croats. This, because the West could not stand up to Serb radicals.

Such a policy also demands a feeble Croatia, one compelled to control the disillusioned Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina in hope of being rewarded. Also keeping Croatia in check are spurious charges at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague against fugitive general Ante Gotovina concerning alleged ethnic cleansing, and assertions against Croatia itself about its policies in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-93.

One would expect that the West could never be so cynical. But consider that during the 50-year communist rule in Yugoslavia, Croat pleas for democracy and human rights were consistently labeled as dangerous nationalism. Croat grievances were seen as threatening the unity of Yugoslavia, and its strategic position as a dividing line between East and West.

To weaken the Croat case, the West readily perpetuates the view that during World War Two Croatians sided with the Nazis to the last man, while the pro-Yugoslavia Serbs fought with the Allies. A fresh look at history reveals that both Serbia and Croatia had Nazi puppet regimes, but the Croats and not the Serbs initiated the Yugoslav antifascist Partizan movement. Croats were its senior leaders and disproportionately its most numerous foot soldiers.

Regrettably, some Jews too have embraced this fallacy about Croats for decades.

Clearly, both Israel and Croatia are victims of similarly convoluted European tendencies that are worrisome for Jews and saddening for Croats. What should come out of the Katsav-Mesic meetings is a realization that Israel and Croatia share a common cause vis-a-vis Europe's leadership.

The writer was Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU and NATO in 1998-2000. He now lives and works in Vienna.

This article can also be read athttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1058011618190

or:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299

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