CROATIA AND SLOVENIA TO DISCUSS DISPUTABLE ISSUES AT CEI SUMMIT

ZAGREB, Nov 10 (Hina) - Croatia and Slovenia will discuss all disputable issues, including the debt of Ljubljanska Banka to Croatian depositors, at the upcoming summit of the Central European Initiative (CEI) at the latest, a spokesman for the Croatian Foreign Ministry, Zeljko Trkanjec, told Hina on Tuesday. The summit is scheduled for November 20-21 in Zagreb. The Slovene Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek said on Monday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had agreed to arbitration in the Croatian-Slovene talks on the Ljubljanska Banka debt. "The meeting between the Croatian and Slovene Prime Ministers is expected to take place at the CEI meeting at the latest", spokesman Trkanjec told Hina when asked to comment on Drnovsek's statement. However, he did not exclude the possibility of the meeting taking place earlier. The Croatian and Slovene Foreign Ministers Mate Granic and Boris Frlec respectively, agreed at the end of August that their countries would try and within a three-month period resolve the problem of the Ljubljanska Banka debt as well as the problem of the Krsko nuclear power plant. It was also agreed that the two sides should seek international arbitration in case they failed to solve the problems on their own. Croatia and Slovenia have so far made little progress in their negotiations on a series of contentious issues. (hina) mm rml