COMPROMISE STRESSED AHEAD OF CROATIA-SLOVENIA MEETING

( Editorial: --> 5599 ) ZAGREB, Aug 24 (Hina) - The Foreign Ministers of Croatia and Slovenia, Mate Granic and Boris Frlec, will meet in Mokrice on Tuesday to discuss all open issues of mutual relations, especially borders and the Krsko nuclear plant. Granic and Frlec will be accompanied by Economy Ministers Nenad Porges of Croatia and Metod Dragonja of Slovenia, who are also to discuss all economic issues. The talks in Mokrice, a castle in Slovenia near the Croatian- Slovene border, are the result of a Croatian suggestion which came after Slovenia strained relations with Croatia by passing unilateral decisions concerning border issues and the operations of Krsko, the nuclear power plant on Slovene territory jointly owned by the two countries. "From our side we are willing to compromise to reach final solutions," Croatia's Granic recently told reporters speaking about tomorrow's meeting. The state secretary at the Slovene Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ernest Petric said he expected the Mokrice meeting would result in compromise agreements "on a wide front". "I expect agreements in principle at least," Croatia's Economy Minister Porges told Hina on Monday speaking about the currently most important issue, the Krsko plant. "I expect tensions will calm down, because we don't need them," Porges said. The Slovene Geodetic Administration recently gave the inhabitants of four Croatian villages south of the Dragonja river, near the south-western Slovene border, house numbers of Secovje, a Slovene municipality, thus formally joining them to Slovenia. After recently cutting the delivery of electricity from the Krsko plant to Croatia, the Slovene Government passed without Croatian consent a decree on the plant's work under which Slovenia may manage Krsko even without Croatia's agreement. According to Foreign Minister Granic "Croatia wants to hold serious talks on real and big issues". He indicated he did not take Slovenia's recent actions too seriously. Croatian-Slovene commissions for land and sea borders have already resolved "98 per cent of problems", he said, adding still unresolved were expert items which require the presence of the Foreign Ministers. Granic believed Slovenia's actions were an attempt to create a more favourable negotiating climate for Slovenia, and assessed that those actions had not really achieved anything. Croatia did not respond to Slovenia's steps by further straining relations, but tried to calm the situation. (hina) ha/mbr 241719 MET aug 98