Slovene Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who on Monday arrived in Sarajevo for an official visit, told reporters that he believed that Slovenia was not responsible for the repayment of savings deposited in old Ljubljanska Banka which ended up in accounts of the National Bank of Yugoslavia in Belgrade with the break-up of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s.
"If experts in Bosnia-Herzegovina have new arguments, we shall study them," the Slovene official said in Sarajevo.
Before the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ljubljanska Banka had clients from all over the federation. Many of them now living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia still try to reclaim the savings they had deposited in the bank.
In 2004, Slovenia and Bosnia agreed on establishing an expert group for the issue, but since then nothing has been done.
"If this issue were simple, it would already have been settled," the chairman of Bosnia's Council of Ministers, Nikola Spiric said after the talks with Jansa.
Spiric admitted that it was up to the governments to find a solution.
Jansa, who has been the first Slovene premier to visit Sarajevo since 1997, was greeted outside the Bosnian parliament's building by an angry crowd of some 200 former Ljubljanska Banka clients who were carrying banners with messages about Slovenia's responsibility for the money they lost in the bank and who were symbolically destroying Slovene products in protest against Ljubljana's dismissal of any accountability.
Apart from Jansa, a delegation of Slovene politicians and business people also arrived in Sarajevo.
Slovene Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel held talks with his Bosnian counterpart Sven Alkalaj.
The Slovene delegation also attended a ceremony inaugurating a new, EUR 27-million meat-processing plant outside Sarajevo. The Argeta plant was built by Slovenia's "Droga-Kolinska" company.