Slovenia's negation of a future ruling in Kosor's opinion is nonsense and she sees it as probably another attempt to frighten Croatia ahead of a final solution to the issue of the now defunct Ljubljanska Bank.

This has to be perceived exclusively in Slovenia's internal political context whereby Prime Minister Janez Jansa and some other politicians are trying to strengthen their position at the expense of Croatia because their political fate is on shaky ground, she said.

Negotiations with Slovenia were completed long ago and Slovenia's Prime Minister at the time, Borut Pahor, signed Croatia's accession agreement on behalf of Slovenia which once again shows that Croatia had done its part of the job to become a member of the EU on 1 July, said Kosor.

Bilateral matters need to be resolved but no one has the right to turn a bilateral issue into a new obstacle for another country's entry, she added.

Slovenia's parliament adopted a separate statement as a supplement to its deposition for the arbitration tribunal, and this supplement expresses Slovenia's expectations of that international tribunal.

Slovenia expects territorial contact from its territorial waters to the high seas, with an explanation from Ljubljana that it had such contact prior to independence. If this is not the case then Slovenia would consider that the arbitration had not fulfilled its mandate.

Slovenian media have commented that this is a platitude without any real impact in an effort to calm tensions that have arisen between Slovenia's leading officials, some of whom have threatened to defer the submission of the deposition to the arbitration court which should be done by next Monday.