CROATIA AND YUGOSLAVIA TO BEGIN TALKS ON PREVLAKA ON SEPT 15

( Editorial: --> 9783 ) ZADAR, Sept 11 (Hina) - Croatia and Yugoslavia will begin talks on resolving the Prevlaka issue on September 15, Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic announced on Friday. Prevlaka is Croatia's southernmost peninsula bordering with Montenegro (Yugoslavia). Yugoslavia has territorial pretensions to this Croatian peninsula, explaining this with strategic reasons. Croatia refuses to discuss any change in state borders, but is willing to discuss security issues. Croatia has offered a plan of demilitarisation of the area to Yugoslavia. Both countries' expert commissions will meet in Zagreb next Tuesday, as agreed by Granic and his Yugoslav counterpart, Zivadin Jovanovic, during recent talks in Zagreb. This will be the first meeting between Croatia and Yugoslavia at which a solution to this issue will be discussed. The issue of Prevlaka was also contentious in an agreement signed by the two countries on the normalisation of relations in 1996. The Yugoslav government said on Thursday that it has accepted the starting points for negotiations in determining south state borders between the two countries and in resolving the issue of Prevlaka. Croatia is entering these talks with a firm stance that Prevlaka is only a security, not territorial issue, and is backed up by relevant resolutions by the UN Security Council. Granic attended a conference in Zadar focusing on Croatian diplomacy in the Middle Ages. Granic said the Foreign Ministry would continue to support conferences which discover Croatia's diplomacy roots. A conference on Dubrovnik's diplomacy took place in this southern coastal Croatian town last year. (hina) lml 111835 MET sep 98