BRUSSELS, April 11 (Hina) - During three-day-long negotiations in Brussels, delegations of five countries-successors to the former Yugoslavia (SFRY) reached agreement on the partition of assets in the Basel-based International Bank
for Settlements (BIS), said Sir Arthur Watts, an international mediator in the negotiations, after the completion of the Brussels rounds of talks on Wednesday. The delegations agreed on the division of 46 tonnes of gold, 8,000 bonds and a part of the cash, the value of which comes to some 500 million US dollars.
BRUSSELS, April 11 (Hina) - During three-day-long negotiations in
Brussels, delegations of five countries-successors to the former
Yugoslavia (SFRY) reached agreement on the partition of assets in
the Basel-based International Bank for Settlements (BIS), said Sir
Arthur Watts, an international mediator in the negotiations, after
the completion of the Brussels rounds of talks on Wednesday.
The delegations agreed on the division of 46 tonnes of gold, 8,000
bonds and a part of the cash, the value of which comes to some 500
million US dollars.#L#
The principle in the division is a key of the International Monetary
Fund, under which the debts of the SFRY were already divided.
Thus, the incumbent Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro, or FRY) will
get 36.5 percent of the assets in the BIS, Croatia 28.5 percent,
Slovenia 16.4, Bosnia-Herzegovina 13.2, and Macedonia 5.4
percent.
Consequently, Zagreb will receive $145-million-worth assets
deposited in Basel.
"I believe the agreement about the BIS will have a positive effect
on further negotiations on the succession... The main thing is that
the IMF key has been applied, which was used also for the division of
debts," said the Croatian delegation's head, Bozo Marendic.
Bosnia was not satisfied with the application of the IMF key as the
only criterion. Sarajevo thinks the additional criterion of the
number of citizens would allocate a larger part to Bosnia and
Macedonia.
According to the Bosnian delegation's head, Milos Trifkovic,
besides the agreement, Slovenia, Croatia and Yugoslavia initialled
a paper promising that in future division, some compensation would
be given to Bosnia and Macedonia. Thus their specific position
would be taken in consideration, Watts explained.
Governors of the five countries-successors' central banks are
obliged to implement the Brussels agreement.
The delegations also agreed to hold another meeting in Vienna on 14
May when the next round of negotiations should take two weeks.
Sir Watts hopes the Vienna meeting will bring about a general
agreement on the succession and help settle the issues of the
division of the archive material, the pensions and the acquired
rights such as the property rights.
Croatian negotiator Marendic said the partition of the archives
remained contentious as the concerned parties did not agree whether
the archive material should stay in Belgrade, with the Yugoslav
obligation to take care of it and make it available to all other
parties at any moment or if some other model would be sought.
Marendic hopes that at the Vienna meeting negotiators will agree on
the division of the SFRY's real estate abroad and its embassies and
consulates. During the Brussels talks they failed to agree on the
number of facilities to be divided at the first stage.
(hina) ms