"We will keep our promises regarding incentives, reforms and changes in the agriculture, but promising interventions and yielding to pressures is something this government and I won't and don't want to do," Jakovina said responding to questions from the press.

He said dairy farmers and companies must reach an agreement but regretted that "some of them don't want that but want radicalisation and protests, and they are the ones responsible for their actions." He added that "a final solution can't be arrived at in the streets."

Jakovina said the agreement negotiated this week offered the possibility of a quality compromise and that the next three months would show how sustainable this model was. He said a model was agreed and not the fixed purchase price of milk.

"According to this model, we arrived at the price of HRK 2.43 (per litre) but this is just an orientation price. We didn't want to fix the price so that farmers were not at a disadvantage over the next three months," the minister said, adding that the average milk price last year was HRK 2.51 per litre and HRK 2.66 in December.

Asked why the milk issue was being called a political issue, Jakovina said it was, unfortunately, motivated in part by political reasons.

He dismissed claims that certain Croatian regions, such as Slavonia, would collapse because of the crisis in the agriculture.

"We must make an effort so that no region collapses, but not by rescuing some agricultural sectors through state interventions, because such interventions are untenable in the long run, especially when we join the EU, where the market determines who can survive."

The minister said the government would pay this year all state aid due farmers in 2011. "That wasn't the case until now, because the former agriculture minister paid aid for the 2007-10 period in 2011."

Jakovina was in the coastal city of Split to open the Maslina Split 2012 international gathering of Mediterranean olive growers.