Slovenia hopes to use its 2008 spell as EU president to break the impasse over the UN-administered Serbian province of Kosovo, by trying to persuade Serbia to give Kosovo independence in exchange for a chance to join the EU, Financial Times says on Tuesday.
The paper says Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel is optimistic despite the obstacles en route to resolving the future status of Kosovo, which include Russia having blocked three pro-independence draft resolutions. According to the London-based daily, Slovenia hopes it can broker closer ties with other former Yugoslav countries, being the only ex-Yugoslav republic in the EU.
Noting that the EU is struggling to overcome the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina, inter-ethnic political deadlock in Macedonia and the Kosovo issue, the Financial Times says that Slovenia's chief advantage in approaching each of these is its intimate knowledge of the region. Beside sharing a similar language and culture with most former Yugoslavs and having political connections from the Yugoslav-era, Slovenia re-established relatively good ties with the independent countries were created after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. According to the paper, growing Slovenian commercial interests across the region are also an important factor. Slovenian investments in the western Balkans accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country's out-going foreign direct investment in 2006. However, the daily notes that understanding the region guarantees very little, saying that Slovenia's plans for Serbia and Macedonia could be overly ambitious and even shepherding Croatia closer to EU membership may prove problematic.
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