Slovenia's high representative for succession to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Ana Polak Petric, told the Ljubljana-based daily Dnevnik on Saturday that she had presented the list of 313 works of art and documents, currently kept by Serbia, to Serbian Ambassador to Ljubljana, Aleksandar Radovanovic, on Friday.
The diplomat Radovanovic declined any comment on the matter.
After the break-up of the SFRY, countries-successors first focused on how to distribute financial assets, inherited from the former state, and real estate including buildings that used to house SFRY embassies abroad.
The art repatriation is likely to take some more time.
Polak Petric said that Slovenian experts should now travel to Serbia to verify the list and she is hopeful that the recovery of Slovenian works of arty, still stored in Serbia, would be successful.
The first criterion for how to attribute a cultural heritage item is the ethnic background of its author. Also, where authors lived and worked would be taken into account for restitution of works of art.
Apart from paintings and sculptures, also films made by Slovenian film-makers that are still kept by the Belgrade-based Yugoslav Film Archive or a stagecoach transferred from Slovenia to a Belgrade museum are on the list.
Slovenia demands originals of international agreements from the era of the two Yugoslavias that refer to Slovenia's territory such as Treaty of Rapallo, a treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), signed to solve the dispute over some territories in the former Austrian Littoral in the upper Adriatic, and in Dalmatia, and of the Treaty of Osimo, signed on in 1975 by the SFRY and the Italian Republic to definitely divide the Free Territory of Trieste between the two states.