FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENCE DR PERRY MEETS WITH PRESIDENT KUCAN

Ljubljana, 30 May 2002


President of the Republic, Milan Kucan, today received Dr Willaim Perry, former US Secretary of Defence, who is on a private visit to Slovenia with his colleagues from Stanford University.

In their talks the interlocutors exchanged their assessments of the current international political situation, particularly of the NATO-Russia agreement and of the Bush-Putin meetings. They also spoke of NATO enlargement and of the opportunities present-day Europe has for overcoming its historic divisions, to integrate, and to thus develop a capacity to play a more active role in resolving global problems and steering global processes.

What still remains is the issue of Europe's South East and the Balkans, President Kucan pointed out, adding that Slovenia too hasn't rid itself of all the problems it inherited from the former Yugoslavia in relation to the former Yugoslav republics. It was in this context that they discussed the border agreement with Croatia. President Kucan reiterated his position as to the incredibly high level of mistrust towards Slovenia which he sensed during his official visit to Croatia, where the impression has been created that Slovenia was in some way trying to appropriate a part of Croatian sea and that what was at hand was not the division of a sea that had never before been divided, President Kucan stated, saying that information in the wrong tone and propaganda could prevent politically wise decisions. He agreed with his interlocutor that patience is required for the situation in Croatia to change and to enable the adoption of the agreement.