The meeting is taking place as Croatia's European Union accession, scheduled for July 1, is jeopardised by uncertainty over a solution to the Ljubljanska Banka issue and the ratification of its accession treaty in the Slovenian parliament.

This will be the first Josipovic-Pahor meeting since Pahor was elected president in December. It will take place on the fringes of a meeting of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts at which they will be named protectors of the Academy.

Prime Ministers Zoran Milanovic of Croatia and Janez Jansa of Slovenia are expected to meet on March 10 to raise the negotiations on the now-defunct bank, which are in the final stage, to a higher level.

Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic and her Slovenian counterpart Karl Erjavec recently said that a solution with a number of variants had been agreed but would not reveal details until it was approved by the two governments.

Erjavec, who is expected to resign as foreign minister on Friday and was last week withdrawn from the negotiations on the bank issue by Jansa, said on Tuesday, when he was to have met with Pusic, that had he remained the chief negotiator for Ljubljanska Banka, the agreement on the issue would have been initialled at this meeting and that Slovenia could have ratified Croatia's EU accession treaty in early March.