NEGOTIATIONS ON SUCCESSION TO FORMER SFRY TO RESUME IN BRUSSELS

BRUSSELS, Dec 16 (Hina) - Croatia's delegation led by Bozo Marendic, the head of the Government's office in charge of the succession project will take part in the 18-19 December meeting of representatives of five countries-successors to former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in Brussels. The negotiations on the succession to the former Yugoslav federation, mediated by international mediator Arthur Watts, within the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), were discontinued at the beginning of 1999 owing to sanctions imposed on Belgrade (i.e. the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, or FRY) which at the time stubbornly obstructed talks refusing to accept the fact that it (the FRY) was just one of the five equal successors to the SFRY. After recent changes in the FRY and its accession into the UN and the OSCE and Belgrade's abandonment of the stand that the current Yugoslavia is the only successor to the former SFRY, Watts convened a new round of the negotiations asking the five countries' officials to express their views on the succession project which they now have. According to the schedule of the two-day Brussels meeting, Watts is to hold bilateral talks with delegations on the first day, and a multilateral meeting is set for Tuesday. Although the new authorities in Yugoslavia have admitted that this FRY is not the only successor to the former SFRY, it is still uncertain which model of the division of the former federation's property they will advocate. The negotiating process could further be complicated if Bosnia- Herzegovina and Macedonia, like at a recent meeting of the five countries' central bank governors, insist that, besides the key elaborated by the International Monetary Fund, the so-called 'combined key' should be used in the division of the property of the former SFRY. The IMF key, strongly advocated by Slovenia and Croatia, implies the division of rights and responsibilities in accordance with the portion of ex individual federal republics in the creation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which matches with the contribution of those republics in the functioning of the then federal budget. According the principle of contribution, Croatia will receive approximately 28 percent of the former property, Slovenia 16 percent, the FRY 36 percent, Bosnia 12 percent and Macedonia five percent. The combined key will take into consideration other criteria such as the number of citizens in countries, and in this way Sarajevo and Skopje will be given a somewhat large part of the cake. Arguments which Zagreb and Ljubljana cite to support IMF key are the principle of the contribution to the former Yugoslav GDP and budgets, and the fact that this key has been used for the division of debts of the former state and it will be now illogical to use another key for the allocation of rights. The succession mass incorporates all the assets and liabilities of the former federation at the moment of its break-up, and includes real estate in the then federation and abroad, archive materials, financial assets (foreign exchange holdings and claims from other countries) and the property of federal institutions and contracts signed by the former federation. According to sources close to the Croatian negotiating team, the FRY will be asked to produce documentation which can help establish exactly the amount of foreign exchange reserves of the then central bank at the moment of the SFRY's collapse. So far it has been known that the former federation had deposited with the Basel-based Bank for the International Settlements (BIS) 46 tonnes of gold, 8000 bonds and a certain amount of foreign currencies, the total value of which is nearly 480 million dollars. (hina) ms