President of the Slovak Republic held talks with President Crvenkovski of Macedonia in Brno

Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič, who attended the 14th Summit of Presidents of Central European Countries in Brno, the Czech Republic, also held several bilateral talks - one of which was a meeting with the Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski.

Crvenkovskithanked the Slovak President for Slovakia’s support of his country’s ambitions to join the EU and NATO. As he said, Macedonians are expecting to receive an invitation to join NATO at the Alliance’s summit to be held in Romania in April next year. The priority objective for Macedonia is to start pre-accession negotiations with the EU.

President Ivan Gašparovič expressed full support to his Macedonian counterpart and stated that the EU enlargement process must not stop. He explained the situation that prevailed in the EU after the failure of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, which may slow down the enlargement by other states to a certain extent. According to President Ivan Gašparovič, the EU has to agree on a new document based on the original of the “Euro-constitution”, which will serve as a basis for the successful operation and further enlargement of the union of European states. The Slovak President expressed his belief that Macedonia does indeed belong in the EU and therefore the Slovak Republic is ready to offer its experience with the pre-accession process.