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The calm waters of the Adriatic Sea are the setting for the latest conflict in the Balkans.
Eighteen years after the fall of Yugoslavia, ex member states Croatia and Slovenia
have not yet managed to agree where exactly the borders between them should be.
Much of the disagreement is over a 20-square-kilometer sea area,
which both countries claim to be their own.
Stelio Erika is a fisherman from the Slovenian town, Piran.
Janko Livio is a restaurant owner living in Savudrija, on the Croatian side of the border.
We have always had good relations here, but this could lead to a bad situation.
They have a lot of territorial waters and many big ports, like Rijeka and Split.
I don't know why they would close the sea passage for us. It just doesn't make sense.
It is an unresolved situation that surely affects the whole area negatively,
and especially people who live near the border.
People just want to live peacefully. We want a friendly relationship with Slovenia,
so we would like the politicians to resolve this situation
and not let fisherman and small people get into it. Why create
tensions that are unnecessary between these two friendly nations?
Tone Kajzer, of the Slovenian foreign ministry, explains why
this dispute is about a vital interest for his country.
Slovenia claims to preserve what it always had, the direct and territorial
access to the open sea. It always had the possibility that the
vessels and the ships come freely through the Slovenian territorial waters.
This is the so-called gate of Slovenia to the outside world.
The border dispute turned into a political conflict when Slovenia
announced last December that, until the borders are settled,
they will block Croatia's EU entry process.
Joining the European Community in 2010 is what keeps Croatia's struggling economy going,
so the Slovenian blockage was not accepted well in Zagreb.
The Slovenians were accused of using their EU member-state veto rights to
to blackmail Croatia, and try to take a few extra kilometers of Croatian land and water.
According to Vladimir Drobnjak, Croatia's EU negotiator,
the Slovenian claims won't hold water in an international court.
Croatia's position is very simple: The border dispute should be solved
in accordance with international law. Both countries -- Slovenia and Croatia --
are members of the United Nations, and we think that the best place to
settle the dispute is the International Court of Justice (ICJ),
which is one of the principle bodies of the United Nations.
My friends in Croatia, they are repeating as a mantra that the
only possible way out is the ICJ. And I'm reminding them that when a candidate
country is entering the EU, it has to fulfill many criteria, and also the criteria of
the good neighbor relations. The member state has the right to implement
the good neighbor relations with a candidate country before it enters the EU.
Croatia's position is that the two things should be completely separated
one from the other; that accession negotiations should proceed without
any impediments. We have numerous examples within the European Union
that the border is not finally settled between a number of EU member states.
Slovenia and Croatia both wish to secure important national interests, but the two
countries, who are about to once again be part of the same community,
are not yet acting as partners.