The Slovenian premier Borut Pahor voiced on Thursday, his regret with the procedure of the opposition Slovenian Democratic Party, headed by their former premier Janez Jansa. Jansa threatened with a parliament boycott, at the sitting when Slovenia was to ratify the accession protocol for Croatia and Albania to enter NATO, which caused the sitting to be delayed until further notice.

“Here the issue of Slovenia’s credibility as a state is not in question. Albania and Croatia were called as members last year, and our cabinet at the time agreed with that, and the circumstances have not changed in the mean time – here the ratification of the accession protocol is in question and the fulfilment of promises” said Pahor after the halted parliamentary sitting in Slovenia’s parliament building to the press.

Jansa commentied the decision of his party to block the sitting of the Slovenian parliament, because Pahor’s cabinet refused to verify the state budget from Jansa’s cabinet in 2007, due to irregularities found by the state revision. He said that the issue of credibility of the largest opposition party is not in question, but the credibility of the current left-centre cabinet is, who due to “ideological reasons” disputed the concluding calculations of the state budget, in which the former cabinet created by budget deficit.

The Slovenian media report that the decision on the continuation of the halted sitting will be made by the meeting of the presidents of parliament, but that the continuation is not possible before next week, because Jansa’s party will keep boycotting parliamentary sittings if Pahor’s cabinet does not allow the conclusive calculations from 2007 to be accepted. Because most refused to accept the conclusive calculations on Thursday, it means that a compromise is needed between the cabinet and the opposition on that topic, and a chanced decision that would make Jansa’s parliamentarians happy cannot legally arrive before the parliamentary committee for finance meet once more.

The Slovenian media stress tonight that the decision by Jansa’s party, whose parliamentarians are needed for the ratification of Croatia’s entry into NATO with a two-thirds majority, came as a surprise for the cabinet. They say that an artificial protocol issue is not in question, and that Jansa supports premier Borut Pahor in his politics towards Croatia, which has been marked by “noisy communications channels” due to the fact that the two state premiers cannot agree on a meeting.