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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday morning 26 Teves, in Jerusalem, met with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who is on his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister.

The Croatian Prime Minister invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to visit Croatia, which is among the friendliest countries to Israel in Europe; relations have become significantly closer in the past year.

The two men signed a declaration of intent on cooperation in the field of prevention of disasters and emergency response. The signing is in the wake of the assistance that Israel received from Croatia during the recent fires and in light of Croatia’s rapid response in providing that assistance, and provides a basis for cooperation.

Following is an excerpt from the declaration of intent:

“[The two sides] hereby declare their intention to explore possibilities of joint avenues of cooperation in the field of prevention of disasters and emergency response.

Such cooperation may include the following forms and methods:

• Exchange of experts and study visits;
• Assistance upon request at times of occurrence of disasters;
• Sharing of information on training programs in the field of preventing and emergency response;
• Exchange of lessons learned from previous experience;
• Any other form or method agreed by the Parties

Prime Minister Netanyahu stated “It’s your first visit to Israel. Certainly I hope it’s not the last because we want to make sure that we have ongoing visits.

“I thank you for your invitation to me to visit Croatia. You have a beautiful country and many Israelis go there, and of course we would like to go there too at the appropriate time.

“We’ve seen a great improvement in our relations in recent years and I want to thank you especially for your strong support in international forums, in European forums, in the UN and elsewhere you stood very clearly and very firmly for the truth, which means standing for Israel.

“We cooperate in many fields and we spoke just now about the need to cooperate even further in the fields of economy, of technology, in every field of economic endeavor but also in the field that we’re already advancing, which is emergency disaster cooperation. The best example is firefighting – we are making progress in a joint international force that we’d like to make from countries in the Mediterranean region. We’re having an exercise, I think a joint exercise in May, that is a practical application of what we’re doing, and we’re going to sign a deceleration for cooperation in emergency situations.

“Beyond that, I think that we are living in a world of great challenge and opportunities. The challenge is clear, there are destabilizing forces throughout our region, some of them are sending firmaments into your region, to the entire world and we have to fight this militant Islamic terrorism together but we also want to achieve an international order of some balance and stability to allow security and prosperity for our peoples.

“This is a very much a goal shared by the two of us and I look forward to continuing that discussion this morning with you and your delegation and to welcome you once again to Jerusalem. Welcome.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Haim Zach, GPO)