12 European foreign ministers meet in Poland on cooperation

WARSAW, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Twelve foreign ministers of the Visegrad Group countries, the Baltic States and the Nordic countries met in Gdansk (North Poland), the Polish foreign ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.

According to local media reports, the meeting was to combating the economic crisis and ways of making Europe more competitive in the world and the Eastern Partnership agenda.

The Wednesday meeting in Gdansk was attended by foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, and Sweden.

Poland Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said they are a very diverse group of countries but they have common interests.

Sikorski also said that the course of the debate proved that this is a good formula. The present financial perspective will finally allow them to implement what Central European leaders have outlined in Visegrad centuries ago - the building of north-south infrastructural and transport links.

During the meeting, the ministers also discussed the Eastern Partnership program.

Sikorski said that the year 2013 may prove to be groundbreaking for the Partnership. He hopes that they will sign an association agreement with Ukraine and possibly end negotiations of agreements with three other Partnership countries Moldova, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The Eastern Partnership program embraces Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Sweden's Foreign Minister Bildt assessed that the implementation of the Eastern partnership is difficult due to the diversity of the states covered by the program. They will help those countries to modernize their economies. Under the certain conditions-the countries involved must be governed by rule of law, open to the world and follow values observed in the EU.

In February 1991, leaders of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia held a meeting at the Visegrad Castle in Hungary to enhance cooperation of the three countries and agreed to the establishment of the regional cooperation organization.

In January 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent respectively and thus Visegrad Group member states expand to four.

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