TOAST BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA MILAN KUÈAN
The celebratory dinner on his official visit to the Republic of Romania

Bucharest (Romania), 8 July 2002


Esteemed President Iliescu,
Esteemed Mrs Iliescu,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I should like first of all, on behalf of all of us here from Slovenia, to thank you most warmly for the hospitality you have shown us. We regard this as a confirmation of our friendship, and as an expression of your desire for closer and more fruitful cooperation between our countries. We also have the desire for relations between Romania and Slovenia to remain as good as this into the future, and for even greater cooperation. I believe that our economic minister, Dr Tea Petrin, and the representatives of robust companies participating in this official Slovenian visit, will encounter open doors.

All the information on our cooperation is positive and increasingly improving. I can therefore state today with pleasure that there are no unresolved issues between Romania and Slovenia. There are, however, great opportunities, and I am convinced that together we will be able to make good use of them. Every day, companies from both countries are concluding an increasing number of business transactions, and enhanced forms of partnership are evolving that, to our mutual satisfaction, should give rise to new manufacturing enterprises and create new jobs for our peoples. I believe that new ties will also be developed. The programme of cooperation in education, science and culture gives us in Slovenia the hope that we will hear and see even more Romanian artists that justly enjoy worldwide fame.

Esteemed Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Romania and Slovenia are also bound together by the efforts of both countries to join the European Union and NATO. In this we are not competing to see who will get into one or the other integration first; rather we are cooperating and helping each other. We are bound together by an awareness that the world has become strongly interdependent, and that for this reason there is a moral duty for us to cooperate in the struggle being waged by the world community of democratic countries against international terrorism, just as we are all bound to contribute to ensuring that the globalised world will not divide people, nations and states into those with a future and those that have no hope of a better life and are trapped in poverty and dissatisfaction. The world belongs to all of humankind, and it will be safe when all people have the right to their own opportunities, and when we are all aware that everyone is responsible not only to themselves for their actions, but also to the entire international community and all of humankind.

Our countries are also bound together by the commitment to seeing the south-eastern part of Europe enjoy peace and development as soon as possible. I do not doubt that, as a close neighbour of that region, Romania is aware of how deeply entrenched are the roots of evil, which for ten years wreaked destruction on the western Balkans, stripped people of their rights, destroyed their human dignity and took away their lives. Today the situation has improved somewhat, thanks in large part to the efforts of Romania. Yet we will only be able to talk more seriously of a lasting peace and of the realistic prospects for the development of this region when Europe delves more deeply into the reasons that led the western Balkans to such a tragic decade. For this reason, on this special occasion, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I express the hope that this day will arrive as soon as possible, and that responsibility for the political future of the Balkans will be assumed by all European countries, in the knowledge that the Balkan problem is a European problem.

Esteemed Mr President, permit me to take this opportunity to thank you also for your substantive contribution at the meeting of Central European presidents, which I hosted recently in Slovenia. I believe that the meeting contributed to this better understanding of our views and positions, and that this strengthened our personal friendship and trust.

Romania and Slovenia have much in common, so I therefore raise my glass to Romania and the prosperity of its people, to our cooperation, to a united Europe and its future, to a peaceful and more just world, to you, Mr President, to you, Mrs Iliescu, and to your personal happiness and successful work, ladies and gentlemen.