“Croatia and Hungary agree that the stability of the Western Balkans is important”, Minister of Defence Csaba Hende told Hungarian News Agency MTI on Thursday, after holding discussions in Zagreb with his Croatian counterpart, Minister of Defence Ante Kotromanovic.
Minister Hende said that during the discussions, they had paid great attention to the chances of Montenegro’s accession to the European Union and Macedonia’s aspirations of EU membership. He added that they had agreed that the enlargement of NATO is justified in the case of these countries.
“We have discussed the threat posed by the Islamic State, with particular emphasis on the persons volunteering from the Balkan region to fight for it and the problems caused by it”, the Hungarian Minister of Defence said.
He pointed out that he had shared the lessons learned so far from the Slovenian air policing mission with his Croatian counterpart. Hungary has been conducting this mission in cooperation with Italy since October 5, 2014.
“We have talked about the Baltic Air Policing Mission, which Hungary will be performing for four months as of this autumn. It will mainly involve air policing tasks, involving the surveillance and control of the airspace”, Minister Hende told MTI.
He added that they had also discussed the possibilities of a joint pilot training programme and the ways of ensuring closer cooperation between special operations forces of the two countries.
On Friday, Minister Hende and his colleagues are going to visit these units in Croatia and attend a display as well.