Slovenian and Croatian Foreign Ministers Karl Erjavec and Vesna Pusić will meet in Zagreb on Wednesday to again discuss the LB bank Yugoslav-era savings deposits issue, which has recently somewhat soured relations between the two countries.
The long-standing dispute, as part of which two Croatian banks are suing with the authorisation of the Croatian government the defunct Slovenian bank, became heated again recently after the governments started sticking each to their own translation of an agreement signed in March this year.
In line with the memorandum signed by the two countries' PMs in March, which paved the way for Slovenia's ratification of Croatia's EU Accession Treaty, the 27 lawsuits against LB were to be "stayed" until the issue is resolved as part of succession to the former Yugoslavia.
One of the lawsuits has recently been allowed to resume by a Croatian judge, who claimed that the memorandum did not have the status of a treaty, meaning that the judiciary needed to act in line with Croatian law that gave no grounds for freezing the proceedings.
While the Slovenian side argued Croatia was pretending ignorance, the Croatian government's last explanation was that it had been Slovenia that failed to secure the consent of its lawyers to stay the lawsuits.
Further aggravating the situation is a differing interpretation of the response by the Basel Bank of International Settlement (BIS) to the two governments' request to help resolve the issue as part of succession to the former Yugoslavia.
While Croatia claims that BIS clearly said the case was not under its jurisdiction, Slovenia begs to differ and is reiterating that Croatia had committed itself to a solution within the framework of succession with the memorandum as well as with the 2001 Succession Agreement.
The meeting in Zagreb is expected to be attended also by the two financial experts for the LB issue, Slovenia's France Arhar and Croatia's Zdravko Rogić, who Pusić said have a few proposals that could lead to a solution.
Source: TheSloveniaTimes
