MESIC AND DRNOVSEK CONSIDER OPEN ISSUES IN BILATERAL RELATIONS

DAVOS, Jan 27 (Hina) - The coming months are crucial for the settlement of all open issues in the relations between Slovenia and Croatia, otherwise the question will remain when they will be resolved at all, Croatia's President Stjepan Mesic and Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek told reporters on Saturday.#L# Mesic and Drnovsek held their meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss winter resort of Davos. "In the coming months we should seriously try to resolve three remaining open issues," PM Drnovsek said. Zagreb and Ljubljana should settle the ownership issue of the nuclear power plant 'Krsko', the pre-war deposits of Croatian citizens in the Ljubljanska Bank, and the demarcation of the border-line in the Bay of Piran. Croatia's head of state added that all issues were resolvable and that there was will to settle. He agreed with Drnovsek that their resolution should be carried out now. "If we cannot solve them now... the question poses itself when they will be resolved at all," Mesic said. The Slovene PM said the political situation at present was stable in both countries. However, if the issues are not resolved soon, we will have to resort to international arbitration, he explained. Declining to give details from the contents of today's talks, Drnovsek said the two sides would test possible solutions for all three problems but the public would be informed only of the final settlement. For the Slovene top official, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be included, as a possible arbiter, in efforts aimed at the settlement of the issue of deposits with the Ljubljanska bank, and he added that it is a difficult problem linked to the succession to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). (hina) ms